I awoke this morning with less than positive thoughts…

I hauled out of the rack thinking what’s the point of going on with this life? I’m seventy three years old. Nobody depends on me, I depend on nobody. At least when I had a dog I had responsibilities. I had a reason to get up in the morning. I needed to walk the dog. Now I got no good reason to get up. Plus, I got all these ailments. Everything’s sore. My neck hurts. My back hurts. My side hurts. My left eyeball hurts. My ass hurts. My mind hurts. What is exactly the point of my life? I’m just an ornery peck among trillions of pecks in the unfathomable vastness of space. Life is meaningless and I’m less than nothing. So WTF is the point?

I often ask myself, why did I get stuck as a human being? With a brain forcing me to always be thinking about shit? With a flesh and blood body that started off good, but soon got old and then older and then lots older? Until I’m finally just a pathetic old wreak? Shit! I’d rather be an old dog than a old human being. At least as an old dog I’m not stuck thinking about shit all damned day!

It makes me mad as hell, thinking about being a human being…

But wait a minute!

Wait just a gal darned minute.

What just happened? Now I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore. And I don’t know about you but when I get mad as hell I feel the need to express myself. I remember suddenly I’ve got this blog. I’m a Blogger. Wow! I’m not just a pathetic old human being. I’m a pathetic old human being with a website. Now I’ve got something to blog about. Wow! This is almost as good as being a Baptist Preacher.

This my mission:

Do some preaching…I mean, blogging…

I’m feeling pretty good all of a sudden.

I’ve been living on a boat, off and on, since 1996.

What’s that, thirty years? Thirty years of not sinking. That’s an achievement. I need to keep reminding myself of this simple fact: I’m busy mastering the art of not sinking.

Not sinking… here at this marina… located in a nice town.

Sausalito is filled with well-off white people. But I don’t gotta hang out with them. Why?

Because I’m floating.

I can hang with boat people.

I can practice not sinking here. Or I can go out walking along the coast trail. After all, it’s still a free country–long as you’re documented.

I can visit the houseboat marina.

People who live in the houseboats are paying the same as the well-off white people who live in the homes on the hill. If not the same, then very close. These are the well-off floating home people. They are not boat people. Boat people live on my dock…Boat people are minimalist—by design or by necessity. Boat people get by on very little.

I like living on nothing. Or as close to nothing as I can get. It’s been a hobby of mine for many years. Since long before I became a boat person. I became a boat person because I like living on nothing. I hate to spend money. There are people who would call me a miser. I think you need to have a lot of money and hoard it to be a miser. I don’t have any money. That’s not entirely true. I have a coffee can stuffed with hundred dollar bills. My nest egg. Hording a nest egg is not misery. It’s common sense….

Another thing I can do today if I feel like it is visit the beach. Sausalito has a nice little beach tucked into the Schoonmaker Marina.

And since hardly anybody ever uses the beach, I’ll have it all to myself. I can lay out in the sun and think about shit. But I wont. Because I don’t lay out in the sun these days. A little too much sun and I’ll probably stroke out. Besides, I was never much for laying out in the sun anyway. It always felt like doing nothing to me. If I’m gonna do nothing I might as well write in my blog. Sit on my boat with the hatch open and stare out across the dock at the old ferry boat up on the hard.

Do nothing and feel good about it.

Practice the Art of Not Sinking.