Dart's in the Shop and Am Already Thinking of the Next Build

The main reason the car is in the shop is because I had been too preoccupied and stressed with work and school the past 5 years that I never really got to enjoy the car (or any hobby) like I wanted to. I worked my butt off, saved all the money I could, got my degree and a good job, and frankly I want a bad @$$ car to drive around in as a graduation present to myself.

Although, I do realize, that since I sent the Dart to a shop, there are some things I probably won't do to it. For instance, odds are I won't remove the engine, tear it apart, and rebuild it. Why? because 1) removing the engine means the Dart won't be driveable anymore. 2) I've never rebuilt the engine before and therefore there are a lot of ways I can mess things up. 3) If I mess it up, there goes that engine and all the money I wasted on it which will piss me off because I generally don't like to do the same job twice. Another example would be rebuilding a transmission. From what I understand, it's very affordable and doable to rebuild a 904, so why not? If these are all going into a project I put no deadlines on and have low expectations for, instead of my prized dream car, the build would be a lot less stressful on me and building the car would be more enjoyable.

As far as project management and cleaning goes, I'd definitely say I need to improve those as they are my weakest points. I tend to focus on the end goal over what I can accomplish now. For the latest upgrades I did to the Dart, it helped I was making a list that I kept on refrigerator and marking things off one step at a time. It really got me through the suspension and brake mods. The shop was only supposed to fix a couple things originally (like an alignment, electrical issues, and steering column problems), but a couple days I made the call, a new engine came into the picture and sort of blew the build out of proportion to where it's at now.

Anyways, right now this is just me talking and speculating what I'd like for the future. Odds are I'm not going to be putting down cash for a car tomorrow morning, or even within the next year. But at least it's nice to imagine what I'd like to do and get ideas from others on what they would do. I'd see my next project as an educational/skill improvement exercise more than "I want to build another cool car."

I know I'm going to be tinkering quite a bit with the Dart once I get it back. I'm going to find some things I like and don't like, some weak points and strong points, and I'm going to slowly tune it to get it to where I'd like it to be.