Month: October 2019

Focus Pocus

Time for a little ranting. Nothing like a solid bitch-fest to purge one’s soul of the endless supply of emotional toxicity we all love to generate.

You know what I liked the most about not having a full-time job?

Not having a full-time fucking job.

I’m not sure how people do this shit their entire lives, but after a month of it, I’m ready to play hobo again. Routine doesn’t seem to bring out the best in me.

But I ain’t goin’ nowhere. I’ve made a commitment to my new friends/bosses, and I plan to see it through till the end. And the extra cash will always come in handy sailing the oceans. Apparently Haitian hookers don’t accept coconuts for barter anymore. Bah, what a world…

It’s not so much the job that’s the problem, it’s the lack of time to work on projects I truly give a shit about. I have no qualms helping others or sacrificing my time to further the things important to them, but I’ve lost a balance necessary to keep my brain from gravitating to thoughts that the human experience is an exercise in complete fucking futility.

But whenever I find myself down, a change in perspective always seems to provide medicine to whatever mental illness is festering in my head. And that’s really what life comes down to — the way you choose to react to your situation at hand.

While pondering this “glass half-full/half-empty” philosophy, my roommate just kicked over his beer, and now we’re in an argument over whether the carpet is half-wet or half-dry. Bah!

Kidding aside, we need to remind ourselves we are always masters of our own fate — our thoughts, our choices, and our boneheaded decisions have put us exactly where we are, and it’s up to us to either be grateful for the opportunities awaiting on the horizon, or bitch and whine that life is tough, cruel, and unfair.

So many problems lie in wanting immediate gratification, and new technologies have done nothing but exacerbate our short attention spans and lack of patience.

But living is a process. Skipping “Step B” to get to “Step C” pretty much always fucks things up. Especially when working with Ikea furniture. Did I mention how much I fucking hate Allen keys?

We need to ground ourselves in whatever “step” we currently find ourselves in — embrace it, enjoy it, fully accept it, and love it. We need to remind ourselves each phase is transitory, which is the greater reason to be present to it, before it fades.  Always living for the endgame completely misses the point of playing.

Control is a complete illusion. We’ll never have whatever whims tickle our fancy appear instantly before us, and we’ll never have a guarantee that the things we take for granted will last indefinitely. Acceptance of our endlessly fragile state is the only way to ward off insanity.

So instead of going back to bed and trying to futiley escape this reality through unconsciousness, I’m getting my ass in gear to finish what needs to be finished. I’m slipping it into high-gear. Shit’s gonna get done — not because it has to, but because I want it to.

I’m excited to get my new book released, but I can’t touch that project until I finish editing another book that’s on my plate, which is going painfully slowly. But the more I immerse intentionality and purpose into it, the faster it will reach completion — like everything else in life.

My advice today? Focus on the now, and fuck the future. It’ll always be a bunch of empty promises. The path we currently saunter down is the only one that matters. Embrace your challenges of the day, and put your anxiety about the unknown twists down the road deep in your backpack. Stress serves no purpose but to ruin the only time we have — right now.

Although there’s more I could add to this post, like how much I hate 80 year-old cocksuckers ordering well-done filet mignon, I have bigger fish to fry at the moment.

How ’bout some words of wisdom from Dr. Seuss to end this spiel…

“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep, because reality is finally better than your dreams.”

Peace out homies.

Celebrate Good Times, Come On!

10,000 things to share, but only a thousand words to do it in.

Bah!

It’s tragic our society has developed such a terrible attention span, but if I expect a blog post to get read, brevity is a must. Stupid fucking Twitter-moron programming.

I had a wonderful, happy, positive spiel to lay down last week, but everything turned south faster than you can say Colonel Sanders sucks chicken cocks by the seashore.

Lemme explain…

In typical, procrastinating Mike fashion, everything on my plate was waiting for “next week.” I needed to drop the mast on my boat, schedule a time to lift out of the water, and contact the dude who agreed to scrap it.

After a punishing 3 days of 12-hour shifts at the restaurant, I was content to laze around most of the week, and sleep in late. But at 7 AM Thursday morning, my phone rang, and I alertly scrambled through the mess on my boat to pick it up — it was Bob, AKA Scrappydoo. He said he would be in town the following week to consolidate other junk removal in the area, and if I wanted his services, it was now or never.

Yikes!

I called the marina office to arrange a lift-out time, but the day was booked, and I was scheduled to work the rest of the weekend. That was a potential problem. I’d likely have to pay off Peever, the douchebag marina overlord, to pull me out of the water on a day they don’t normally schedule liftouts. Fuck.

So I texted my buddy Scott to help me lower the mast, and he came down to the marina within a few hours. That was a bonus. At least the ball was rollin’. In the middle of the process, while I was trying to unbolt the base pin on my mast step, my phone rang. Peever was on his way down to take another boat out of the water, and if I was ready, he’d do me next. Well, lift me out of the water I should have said. He’s been doing me up the ass with dock fees the last 3 years.

Fucking sweet. Things were looking better by the moment.

After getting through another work weekend, the next thing to deal with was tearing my boat apart to give the hardware to my buddy. I worked the first day by my lonesome while Scott finished his last shift at the mine, which left us only one day to get the remaining bulk of work done.

He was tired, but he showed up ready to rock. We spent a surprisingly enjoyable 12-hour day carving up the boat that I thought would be my potential home the rest of my ocean-sailing life. The odds seemed against us, but we pulled our shit together and got ‘er done. We learned a few things that made my new boat decision seem like an even more brilliant move — such as the decaying particle-board core lining my deck. That would have been a horrible surprise if I’d followed through with my initial plans to fully renovate the boat.

I slept on Big Boner Bird that night in the other marina across the bridge, and biked down early in the morning to give Scrappydoo access to the card-controlled gate entrance.

I had a bit of time to kill, so I started writing a blog post about “Celebration Day.” Something to do with hard work, dedication, perseverance, and other bullshit that I anticipated coming to fruition after my old boat was scrapped.

Just as I started writing, Bob texted, informing me he would be arriving early. I closed my laptop and biked up to the gate to let him in. In the span of 10 minutes, my big post about celebrating a job well done turned to shit. The first thing Scrappydoo did was pull out a drill and magnet, to test my keel. The specs on my Nash 26 keel design turned out to be pure bullshit. It quickly became apparent my lead keel was, in fact, steel.

Bobby was pissed. Not only was he quick to inform me there would be no free removal of my hull, but he would be charging me a $150 service fee to show up under false pretenses.

Fuck.

If I wanted the boat removed, it would be a further 1200 bucks.

Fuck.

He left in a huff, and I went to sit down on the nearby park bench to formulate a new plan.

But I didn’t freak out. My sober-minded thoughts boiled down to Relax, Mike, a new plan will present itself…

If I waited to deal with my broken hull till next year, fucking Peever would charge me 400 bucks for winter storage. So I made a snap decision. Scrappydoo had only driven away 10 minutes earlier. He wouldn’t be far. I called him back.

“Hey Bobby, It’s Mike.”

“Hi Mike.”

“You still wanna scrap this thing? I’ll pay you.”

“Sure, be right back.”

His pissy attitude became nicey-nicey again. I biked back to the gate to let him in, and he informed me that if I paid him cash, he wouldn’t charge me taxes.

Cool.

Back at the boat, I asked if an e-transfer would be acceptable. Of course, he said.

So I watched his fucked up process for the next hour as he ran a zip cut through my keel, and realized he couldn’t use his winch to pull the hull off my trailer. He ended up deciding to run my rig to a dump an hour away — a dump that had a lift to dispose of my junker.

When he got back — safe and sound — he informed me my e-transfer went through fine, but because I chose that method of payment, taxes would be involved. I owed him money.

You must be fucking kidding me.

An e-transfer is cash, dumbass. Just as I was considering shaking his hand to thank him for his work, all I could envision was punching him in the balls.

Bah!

So now I was out 1350 to scrap a boat that I thought would cost nothing to dispose of. That put a big kibosh on the stupid “celebration” blog post.

After an evening of lamenting at Scott’s house, my final thoughts of the night resolved to positivity. The old boat was off my plate, and the new one rocked. Yeah, I was out some unexpected bucks, but when it comes down to it, I do lead a bit of a charmed life. Another sober-moment thought said, No worries, Mikey, God will balance it all out for you before long.

So, 3-days later, in a Price is Right Moment, God said:

What’s behind curtain number 2?

(Dramatic Pause)

A new car!

Haha. Not quite God’s doing, but a fun moment nonetheless. My brother, the dude with a heart of gold, just bought a new vehicle, and offered me his old one. One of his texts during the process said:

Bluebook value, 4 K. Your cost, 0 K.

How could I say no?

Although I could have bought my own machine anytime in the last 3 years, my decision not to do so always had to do with my aversion to give corrupt insurance companies a single penny out of my pockets, or pay a corrupt motherfucking government transfer taxes on a vehicle that already had taxes paid on it. What a wonderfully fucked system we live under. Praise Jesus we’re “free.”

But the Universe tends unfolds the way it should, so I was ecstatic to accept his generous gift, to see what new games were in store. My brother and mother have always been incredibly giving and supporting of me, and I always think of them when it comes to the way humans should treat one another on the planet.

Fuck, I’m getting way over my word limit here.

But that’s okay. Ramble is what this stupid site is about. Possibly egomania and self-aggrandization too, but let’s not get into that now.

At the end of the day, it all works out. I love this life. I love people, and I love the opportunities I’ve been provided to grow, evolve, and learn to appreciate all the gifts that have come my way.

Okay Mikey, shut the fuck up already. Carry on another time. Much more to discuss, but other issues press. Dick jokes on Daily Bread ain’t writin’ themselves.

Kudos to my family and friends who prop up my sorry ass. You guys rock. I humbly bow to your generosity and selfless actions.

Life is a fun ride if you embrace it with gratitude and a bit of humility. Perhaps I lack in the humility department, but I’m certain I’ll alwyas excel at self-humiliation.

New books coming out soon, including a poetry tome written by my mother, which I need to spend some serious hours editing this week.

Stick around, the good times are always ramping up.

Peace, friends, life is good.