Sunset at Capitola beach. Photo by Bonnie Shinliver.

My Sister’s good with a camera. She sent me a I-phone file of photos she took on a recent trip to Mexico. I tried to upload them to my Google pictures. No luck. My Droid wont accept the pics. Or I can’t figure out how to do it. Probably the later. I could do it if she sent me one picture at a time. Real slow like you do with a invalid or a moron. So maybe she’ll do that. Until then…

YABBA DABBA DOO!

Here’s the deal

It’s dawned on me lately how useless I am. That’s not the whole part that dawned on me. Not only am I useless, I’m old and lazy and set-in-my-ways. I’m fading away, kind of. I’m not fading fast. I’m fading week-by-week, month-by-month….or, let’s say, with certainty, year-by-year. Each year I’ll be a bit more out of touch. Until I’m just a silly old dude, waving at the drunks as they line up for booze samples, offered by Yours Truly, free of charge, at a participating Safeway…

I need to take drastic action.

Like what?

What can I do to reverse my swift decline into immateriality?

I’m thinking I could start pack’n.

Like this:

Maybe more like this:

Viva La Revolucion

Maybe I’ve Outlived My Usefulness?

I awoke this morning thinking I’ve outlived my usefulness. It wasn’t the first wake up. I’m talking the fourth wake-up. By now it’s after nine. I’m feeling good from twelve hours sleep. But then it hits me I’m an old dude. I’m thinking, “Gloomy…man!…you’ve outlived your usefulness!”

What a depressing thought.

I’ve outlived my usefulness! I’m depressed. I’m feeling awful…until…until it further dawns on me, I’ve never had any usefulness to begin with.

I’m not a useful kind of person.

I’m more of a help-me-out kind of person.

When was I ever Useful?

My Aunt Hazel used to say to me, “make yourself useful. You’ll never amount to anything in this world if you don’t make yourself useful!”

And dog gone it. She was right. I never became anything. I mean, I was a pretty good Salesman. But what is that? That’s like saying, I was a pretty good Con Artist. I’m currently a Blogger. But what’s that? I’m certainly not an influencer. Not yet anyway. And who would I wish to influence if I became a big time influencer? I’d like to influence other old farts to do nothing all day.

No, I gotta admit. I’m not now nor have I ever been Useful.

I’ve never been useful to anybody for any length of time…

How can that be? Come on, Gloomy. Think. Surely you’ve made yourself useful to somebody at one point or another in your life? Think!

All I can think, I’ve been useful for short periods of time to certain people. Female companions, for example.

Either they made use of me.

Or I made use of them.

I wouldn’t make use of them in a viscous way.

More like just trying to help out, kind of….

How did this foreign notion of Usefulness enter my head in the first place?

All I can think, a couple things happened. I got sick over Christmas. A real bad chest cold, or RSV, or whatever. Two weeks I had this thing whatever it was and I’m still getting over it. The second thing resulted from the first. I got sick, and cuz I was so sick and miserable, I quit drinking. That’s right. I have not had a single drink of alcohol (except for two beers at a Eye Talian Restaurant) in two whole weeks. It looks like I’ll be dry for the whole of dry January. Maybe I’ll stop drinking altogether. I mean, I barely have an urge to drink. In point of fact, I can say I do not have an urge. Except once in a while when I have a itty bitty urge….

Anyway, so It’s Dry January. I’m hanging out on Scruffy.

Feeding my deadbeats.

When a notion occurs to me.

What occurs to me is, I feel kind of…what?…what do I feel? I feel alert. Yeah, I’m feeling kind of alive and in the moment. Not in a total consciousness kind of way like your Gurus do. More of a I-got-nothing-to-look-forward-to kind of way. A feeling that I oughta be doing something or other.

Ambition has somehow crept into the void left by my abstinence!

I don’t drink, so now I figure I gotta do something useful

Really?

Is this really what I get for not drinking?

Ambition?

I’ve been duped! I do a positive thing and I get rooked for it.

This is unfair.

I need rid myself of this Ambition.

I need to do what my old buddy Cal (R.I.P) used to tell me:

“Whenever I get a surge of Ambition, I lay down until it goes away.”

Cal was an ace Car Salesman. I brought him into the coupon business, peddling auto maintenance coupon books door-to-door. He did that until he retired. Then, he did absolutely nothing for over twenty years.

Dude should’ve got a medal for doing nothing.

Against my better judgement, I’ve made myself useful…

I did a bit of research, and hopefully this video will help those of you who’ve quit drinking and are now plagued by Ambition to work towards becoming a more useless person.

With practice, you may even earn a medal!

Good luck!