So I’m selling my car and I feel incredibly emotional.

I’ve written before about parting ways with my noble steed, but this time it’s serious. It’s for real. It’s permanent.

I’ve had this car for my entire adult life, and it’s been like a comfort blanket of sorts – albeit a fuel guzzling one with a huge turning circle. It was my hail damaged quantum of solace; ferrying me from one disappointment to the next. It has been a comforting constant in my life over the years; it was with me long before I realised my side fringe was out-dated.

But I find myself behind the wheel of another vehicle (one of the too many cars my parents had, to be precise). I find myself admitting my former charger can’t sit in my parent’s spare paddock forever. I find myself moving on.

I know the time is right to pass it on to new owners, but I need to do it the right way. I need the poetic conclusion I crave but also avoid like the plague.

I know I need to pour some petrol on my past, light a match and toss it behind me as I strut towards the future (in vinyl hotpants, with unexplained toned legs of course). I yearn to hurtle towards the great unknown in a cloud of glitter. But no matter how fabulous an ending may be, it is still an ending. And that’s a little sad.

I’m about to move on to another phase in my life and I find myself aching for the meaningful moments of clarity American teenage movies taught me I needed. I want to take a last long look at the sun setting over the mountain in front of my parents’ home. I want to watch as the bonfire flames lick a handwritten letter. I want a single tear to be wiped away by a knowing hand.

Instead I’ve booked a pap smear, cancelled my phone bill mail out and am flogging unnecessary items on Gumtree.

Because the truth is that life doesn’t present proufound moments of importance. As much as I hate to admit it, my life isn’t a Hollywood epic, or even low-budget made-for-television movie.

There won’t be a banjo solo when my heart needs it most. The eagle flying into the sunrise will have nothing to do with my soul being set free and everything to do with a rotting sheep carcass over the hill. The rain won’t ever pour because I’m in the complication-cum-dramatic-realisation stage of a relationship.

So I have to invent my own meaning.

And I think I’ve done that with my Gumtree ad. It has been a particularly poignant Monday morning:

“The greatest advertisement for Toyota ever” – George, my mechanic.

This Camry may have entered its second decade of existence this year, but unlike other 20-year-olds, this wide-boned lady hasn’t had a breakdown of any kind – emotional or mechanical. This bastard just keeps on going.

I’ve had this car for about eight years now and the most I’ve ever had to do it was tape the bumper bar back on (don’t worry, it’s been professionally fixed now). The most my mechanic has had to do to it was replace the timing belt.

With 350,000 ks on the clock this old bird has seen some things, and I can’t say the only journeys we’ve been on together were purely distance-based. It’s been a spiritual ride and while the road wasn’t always a smooth surface I always made it home. Now we’ve reached a fork in the road and it’s time to go our separate ways.

But this Camry is far from reaching its final destination.

Sure, there are some dents, a bit of hail damage and that bumper bar doesn’t match the rest of car but it still does what it needs to do – get you from A to B. IT was previously registered in NSW so it was roadworthy about six months ago. The tyres are newish, with one being particularly fresh because I always seemed to run over a damned echidna with the same wheel.

The air con is an icy blast so powerful it could rival the cold bone chilling stare of Julie Bishop. The boot has enough room for a cumbersome swag, an esky and all your emotional baggage. The driver’s side sun visor has a mirror for you to check your teeth in.

Basically this car has everything a modern person could want (except electric windows or Bluetooth). And it needs a good home. Open up your heart and you garage door to this chariot, and you shan’t be disappointed.

Hopefully the car new owner exists and drives it away as the sun sets.

I am basically a spiritual guidance counsellor for humanity, according to Ms Briggs, Ms Meyers-Briggs and that Jung guy.

I shit you not. And you may think that “I shit you not” isn’t something a grand messiah of truth and knowledge would say, but the person who says “I shit you not” was the one filling out the questionnaire and that person (that would be me) received test results telling them they fell into the category of “benevolent pedagogues of humanity”. And I’m not trying to suggest anything, but I did go to a Year 9 dress up party in a homemade Jesus costume (all the girls from the fancier schools dressed up as sexy ladybeetles and shit, while I was clad in bedsheets and had taped cuttings from a mop head to my face).

The other day I had a crack at finding out my personality type according to a test developed by one of the top real-life mother-daughter combo (besides the pair who sang Where You Lead for the opening credits of Gilmore Girls and those two delightful redheaded heroes saving one house at a time on Good Bones) Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers. The pair based this test on a theory put forward by Carl Jung (source: Wikipedia, which I know will hurt my provisional clinical psychologist friend, but she should be comforted by the fact that I didn’t harass her for answers this one time…).

Now, this test has its limitations and has copped some serious criticism for being unreliable, apparently giving people different results when the test is taken on different occasions. This particular test is probably somewhat sketchy, as it took like 10 minutes to complete and was completely free and basically tried to tell you to apply to certain colleges, but that’s all small stuff.

According to me results, I have “tremendous charisma” and offer “nurturant tutelage” to those lost souls out there. This may make me sound like a cult leader, and I can’t say a cult led by me would necessarily be a bad thing. Since I’ve freed up my mental space by finally deciding on which Akubra to buy (an emotional journey you’ll hear about in due course), this is something that I’ve been thinking about lately: what kind of spiritual messiah would I be?

I don’t really have any commandments at the moment, other than “only drink if you’re trying to get drunk because otherwise it’s empty calories”. I only own one pair of sandals. And the last time I spoke in public I told people to “hit the piss and tear it up”. But according to my test, I have the ability and the vision to make real change. There are lost sheep in the world looking for a shepherd with one of those sticks with the curly bit on the end to steer them into the right path. They need a shining light and I can be their environmentally friendly light-emitting diode bulb.

I guess I’m the spiritual leader the world probably could do without and didn’t ask for – like Pauline Hanson. My robe would be a silky leopard print number (which I bought on sale). My sacred text being highlighted passages from Harry Potter. My septa, a dagwood dog. I like to think that I would become the living, breathing Magic 8 Ball people would turn to in times of confusion. A What Would Dannielle Do, of sorts. Sometimes the answer would be “yeah nah”, other times “nah yeah” and the occasional “oi, what do you reckon but?”. I want people to cling to my every inappropriate word. I want people to quote me in their lipstick affirmations on their bedroom mirrors. I want to make it so big that I’m featured on the covers of spare tyres on suburban families’ four wheel drives – I’m going to replace the “Gone fishing”s and the “Nut loose at the wheel”s with my glaringly overbearing chin dammit!

If this free internet quiz is to be taken as gospel truth – and it should be – I have the power to make it big. But I’ve got a lot of work to do if I’m going to establish myself as some kind of living deity. Because right now my only major follower is a local dental surgery liking every one of my Instagram posts in the last few weeks in a desperate bid for a follow-back.

At least it’s a start, I suppose.

I’m supposed to be soul searching but I can’t find my soul.

In my clichéd 20-something “finding myself” phase, I’ve found that I’m poorly suited to most activities one typically engages in in order to find myself.

I’ve found that I’m far too poor for overseas travel. I’m also not willing to commit to a new course of study. I’m also still a little bit too selfish to donate my time to volunteer organisations. My attention span has been rotted by memes to a point where I can’t sit and read a pretentiously-long book. I’m not really keen on smoking a bunch of weed because I feel like I have the mental predisposition to experience some drug-induced life-fucking effects – I’m already so paranoid that if I do something that sounds like a fart, I make the noise again when I’m by myself because I can never be too sure if someone’s watching me.

The only way I conform to the stereotype is by my unhygienically-long hair, shaky job prospects and the unfounded notion that I will one day be some spectacular person who makes bank, has a country house with multiple porch swings and is casually friends with the likes of that squinty-eyed guy who was in that movie with Zac Effron and had a re-occurring guest role on Modern Family.

I know exactly what I’d do with my down time after reaching the nervous-fart-inducing heights of my career, but not the faintest idea of what I’d do when I went to work. I’ve spoken about this before, and no doubt I’ll rehash this idea again and again to make it seem like new content, but I really don’t know what activity I should be doing in order to generate personal profits. But I know that I want a desk made out of upcycled wood, a steady supply of fresh flowers and a decorative way to store my snack carrots at my fancy, fancy office.

So with no goals and a lack of the will/means to engage in traditional methods of “finding myself”, I’ve decided to take on the poor man’s route: online quizzes.

This particular quiz was done in order to tell me whether I was a Type A or a Type B personality. But all it did was waste about ten minutes of my time and prompt me to pay for a detailed analysis of myself based on my questionnaire. Unfortunately for this survey company’s business model, the intensity of my self-obsession is only outshone by my stinginess.

There were a lot of questions. Some of them got me like the one that asked how I felt after not being able to complete everything on my to-do list. A alluded to feelings of immense failure and a general stink-eye towards both myself and life. B was some wishy-washy bullshit about feeling good about focusing on the stuff I HAD achieved on the to-do list. C was straight up blasphemy – “I never keep to-do lists”. Obviously I answered A.

Other questions were less inline with my thinking. There was one about sports which I could tell what they were getting at, but the question-writers clearly underestimated the powers of vanity and laziness. It asked me that, when playing sport, if I A) make sure I’m the star player B) try to be the best C) may try to win, but my goal is simply to have fun or D) just have fun. I didn’t know what to answer here. Because I’m not playing sport to be a winner or to enjoy myself. If I’m getting my arse up off the couch it’s for one thing and one thing only – to have a ripped rig. I mean, the secondary affects on my mental health and physical health are important (I do turn into a real arse-pimple grumble-bum if I haven’t been for a run in a week). The question didn’t even have my other reasons for playing sport such as: desperate need for social inclusion, fear of missing out, getting free merch and the possibility of winning a metre of pizza (once my social touch team managed this feat, and I did absolutely nothing to contribute).

The questionnaire was full of predictable questions which you could already tell were geared towards confirming or denying your Type A personality. They were all the kind of personality traits the female lead character typically personifies in a romantic comedy before they find love/realise they don’t want to die alone and settle for some schmuck by changing who they are. And I have to be honest, I did answer “strongly agree” or “somewhat agree” with most of the uptight, bull-busting statements on the test. But there were a few glaring anomalies: namely the one about eating on the run.

Focused, goal-driven people typically don’t have time to eat proper meals because they’re too busy yelling into their headsets and pressing buttons on their Blackberries. But I sure as shit am not. Because breakfast is important. And you know what? Those breakfast poppers taste like whiteout. And those people who would rather get 15 minutes of sleep than eat are fuckwits. Breakfast isn’t just a timeslot for radio shows. It’s breaking the fast to endured while sleeping. It’s fuelling your brain and body for the day ahead. You don’t ignore that. And these idiots who brag about not having breakfast in the morning before work because they are so busy/tired/time poor/just can’t eat in the morning are wankers. You think you’re cool because you keep oversleeping, can’t get out of bed on time and have to eat a piece of white toast with jam in the car on the way to work? Well you’re not. You’re a dingbat. Maybe you should just stop trying to live like a meme, quit watching Netflix until the early hours and stop drinking wine alone and you’d sleep alight. You don’t disrespect breakfast. You sit down, pick up a knife and fork and eat your freaking eggs.

It’s about here when I realised that perhaps I’m a special type of person. I’m a Type A personality with a tendency to rant and alienate people with my unnecessarily strong opinions about trivial matters.

Perhaps this is why I’m currently looking for a job…

I’m a goal-orientated person with no goals.

#goals has been trending for months now, and I’m feeling left out. Every bastard with an iPhone and a flat brim has used the hashtag in an aspirational post these days. It could be a picture of a souped-up jeep or a muscle-laden couple or sweet pad – whatever it is they are shooting for. They post a photo of it, stamp it with the hashtag and tell the world what they want from their little lives. Now it isn’t often I’m envious of someone who thinks a personalised plate is a good use of money, but do admire these people for knowing what they want. Sure their goals may be trashy an unattainable, but at least they have them. For someone like me, not having a goal is not easy.

I wouldn’t say that I’m technically a Type A personality, but I do fit some of the criteria. I like to make lists. I like colour-coding things. I like order. Order is my favourite. I wouldn’t say that I’m frighteningly ambitious, but I bloody love crossing off a to-do list. To-do lists are my pingas. Really. I just Googled “The Affects of Pingas” (I promise I’m cool, I’ve been to Thailand ok?!) and all the symptoms match up. Increased confidence and energy? Check. Feelings of wellbeing? Check. Feelings of closeness to others and lowered inhibitions? Check-a-roo. I probably would consider a one-night stand after knocking off a to-do list, mostly because it would allow for the creation and completion of a whole other to-do list (winks).

I guess I’m addicted to the feeling of achievement a good to-do list can offer. And the best part about these lists is that they can be total bullshit. One day my to-do list was to buy a comical vest and bake brownies. And sure, that’s not as impressive as say, finishing an essay, doing 100 squats and submitting your tax return, but finishing a to-do list is finishing a to-do list and you’re guaranteed a spike of dopamine once you draw that final tick.

I’m really into achievement, but the problem is that I’m yet to think of something to achieve. Right now I’m in my fourth day of unemployment and the only things I’ve done with that time was avoiding a car accident when I vomited into my steering wheel in two lanes to traffic (don’t worry, that story is coming) and bake a batch of pumpkin scones.

I’m obviously hitting up the job search websites everyday, but I don’t know what direction I want my life to take. I don’t know where I want to end up, so it’s really hard to work out what step to take. At 24, teenage me thought I would have had that sorted out by now. A Younger Me thought that, by now, I’d own several intimidating blazers, have my own office, funky nails and my own typewriter (but then, A Younger Me based her career goals on the journey of Sue-Ellen Crandle from Don’t Tell Mom The Babysiter’s Dead).

Right now the only life goals I have are to avoid getting fat and to avoid getting poor. It’s pretty hard to base a career around that. I need more concrete, clear-cut goals. I need set ambitions. I need interests.

But at the moment, my concrete goal is to buy an Akubra. My ambition is to be able to financially support a Saint Bernard named Keith. My interests are complaining, magazines and champagne.

So this doesn’t do much by the way of pointing me in the right direction, career-wise. I feel like I have been given a huge opportunity to steer my life in a new, fulfilling direction thanks to this work hiatus. I feel like I’m on the cusp of something big. But it’s difficult to take those first few steps without a clue of where I’m going to end up.

As much as I hate being the clichéd 20-year-old with unprofessionally long hair finding herself; I need to do a bit of soul searching. I have to “go on a journey to me”, which is a cringe-worthy phrase that sounds like a euphemism for masturbation, but that’s apparently what I need to do.

So I’m going to go ahead an embrace the cliché. I need to find out who I am. I need to find out what I want from life. I need to come up with my goals. If for nothing else, it will mean I’ll able to finally use the hashtag #goals.