Posts Tagged With: adventure

Life Changes Just Around the Corner With the New Season (Aboard a Wharram)

Posted on November 23, 2025 by sgwest66

There’s a specific kind of silence that drifts over a Wharram just before the cool change of season.

Sunsets Are More Comfortable

It’s not just the temperature of the air or water—those are easy enough to identify. I find a silence that’s… something else, something subtle. It’s a pause. A breath. A moment where the world seems to lean in, as if it’s waiting for whatever comes next.

I’ve lived aboard for nearly two years now. What’s become apparent is the recognition of change. In the same way you recognize the creaks of the hulls or the gentle rumble of the kettle coming to a boil. I feel the world shifting, and my little floating life is about to shift with it.

The thing about seasons is that they don’t just happen outside of you. They happen within you. And living on a Wharram—a boat that invites a deep kind of intimacy with weather, time, and the many moods of our aquatic world —you feel these shifts in more ways than one.

The First Signs Arrive Quietly

It’s rarely the big, dramatic signs that tell you the season is turning. The signs arrive in very subtle ways.

For example when summer is approaching its end.

Changing Temperature

One morning, you wake up and realize the deck feels cooler under your bare feet. Not cold. Not even chilly. Just… cooler. The morning sun doesn’t arrive with the intense heat of mid summer anymore. The daily arrival point of “it’s too damned hot” happens a little later each week.

It also begins to show at sunset. No longer is the last couple of daylight hours filled with the intense blowtorch heat from both the sun and its reflection from the water. You can now sit, in the shade, without sweating like a dripping sponge.

The world is changing.

So are you.

Living Close to the Vagaries of the Season

For me, living on a Wharram means living at the mercy—and delight—of the small details of the natural world. There’s no central heating . No thick insulation slowing the transfer of heat.

A Wharram is an honest boat. Admirably so.

When the season shifts, the boat tells you long before your calendar does.

The lashings seem to change their tension depending on humidity, allowing the beams to sometimes creak in their sockets when the boat gets rocked by waves. The morning air slips over the bows with a different character you can’t hide from. I’m exposed to it just from making my morning coffee, it’s in the other hull with an open deck in between.

And you become an involuntary weather-watcher.

Most people have to step outside to feel the season. You simply wake up and feel it immediately—in the boards under you, the air inside the cabin, the way your pillow holds warmth or releases it instantly.

There is nowhere to hide from seasonal change aboard a Wharram.

Delightfully Exposed

But that is precisely what makes it beautiful.

Seasonal Shifts Bring Inner Shifts

The funny thing about the changing season is that it always seems to come hand-in-hand with a quiet internal rearranging. Every new season invites a different version of you to step forward.

Maybe that version is more contemplative.

Maybe more adventurous.

Maybe a little tired and ready for rest.

Maybe itching to do a refit, finish repairs, or start those improvements you swore you’d get to when “things slowed down.” Not that they ever really sped up on a Wharram.

Many Projects

Living on a Wharram makes this inner-shift especially unavoidable. The boat’s openness invites self-awareness of a rare kind. The elements aren’t out there. They’re right here, drifting through the living space, humming in the rigging, tapping lightly at the hulls and cabin tops.

A new season arrives, and you feel you’re being nudged toward something. A different rhythm. A bolder mindset. Or simply the kind of small internal maintenance that humans need just as much as boats do.

We don’t often talk about spiritual oil changes, but maybe we should.

The Rituals of Transition

The strange thing about seasonal transitions aboard, especially leaving summer, is that they always initiate a kind of domestic dance—small rituals that prepare you, your boat, and your mind for what’s coming.

You might have:

Another blanket or two that now lives permanently on the bed

The small heater to ward off the morning chill is out of storage

The hatch above the bed doesn’t open quite as early in the morning

Put away the fans and pretend you’re not a little sad to see them go

Consider where you stashed the cold weather gear months ago

These rituals are the liveaboard’s version of migrating geese—or squirrels storing nuts, only you’re pulling sweaters or repositioning your cold foul-weather jacket so you don’t find yourself hunting for it at exactly the wrong moment.

Winter’s Coming

There’s a quiet satisfaction in these small preparations. They aren’t exactly chores; they’re acknowledgments. Telling yourself, I see what’s coming. I’m ready in my own small way, at least I think I am.

And maybe that’s what seasonal transitions are all about—becoming ready for something you can’t quite articulate yet.

The Emotional Weather Report

If I were to file a personal weather report during this seasonal change aboard, it might read:

“Growing swells of introspection, increasing probability of mild restlessness, warm pockets of nostalgia, and scattered clarity across the afternoon. Winds variable, blowing toward future possibilities.”

Seasonal anticipation for me rides its own kind of emotional tide. I’m not necessarily sad, nor necessarily excited, but suspended in that productive in-between space where reflection becomes easier and clarity tends to drift in and out unexpectedly.

This is why the changing season often brings questions I haven’t thought about in months:

Should I reorganize the cabin?

Should I write more?

Should I finally fix that one squeak that I only hear at 3 a.m.?

Am I moving in the direction I want, both literally and metaphorically?

What do I truly want out of the next few, colder, months?

Not a Terrible Office

I dream of warm tropical beach’s right alongside dreaming of the unbelievable beauty of cold northern places like Nova Scotia.

These questions drift in the same way clouds drift across the sky—sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes gathering in meaningful formations. And living aboard means you have the time and space to actually notice them.

Life ashore often moves too quickly for these thoughts to gather traction. Aboard, they drift in and out naturally like the tides.

Letting Go of One Season Before Entering Another

One of the quiet truths of living on a boat is that you’re always letting go of something.

Sometimes it’s literal—objects that don’t fit the space or get used enough, clothes that don’t suit the climate, gear that you finally admit isn’t pulling its weight.

Too Many Maybe Things

But other times, it’s internal. Outdated worries. Old priorities. Habits that once made sense but don’t anymore

And I think each season asks you to release something different.

Summer asks you to let go of excess—too much clothing, too many indoor activities, the belief that you need walls to feel secure.

Autumn asks you to slow down. There’s no need for constant motion.

Winter asks you to accept the comforting monotony of early nights, warm drinks, and low-key living.

Spring demands you let go of dormancy—the temptation to stay comfortable, quiet, unchanging.

Living aboard seems to heighten all of this. There’s no spare space to hoard possessions or old versions of yourself. You become intimately aware of what your “next season self” may not be anymore.

For me this feels healthy, almost instinctive. Just as the Wharram needs to be a minimalist environment, your mind benefits from getting rid of clutter. Just as the boat can be reorganized for the seasonal change, you can reorganize internally.

You let go, because the season asks you to.

The Wharram and the Wider World

One of the unique joys of living on a Wharram is that it gives you a front-row seat to the drama of the natural world, without drowning you in theatrics.

The open decks, the simple nature of the hulls, the flex and give of the rigging—all of it creates an intimacy with the change in seasons. Nature doesn’t shout at you through glass. It whispers through the fibers of the boat itself.

And at the same time, living aboard lets you feel connected to the broader human experience.

People everywhere feel the tug of seasonal change, even if sheltered from it. Even if they ignore it as the heater kicks on or the first frost carpets across their car’s windshield.

While they sit in their climate controlled cars or apartments, you sit on the exposed deck with your morning cup in your hand and the sky wide open above you.

Big Skies, Hot Coffee

In a way, the experience is universal—you’re just… closer to the source.

The world is changing for everyone. You’re simply noticing it sooner.

The Inner Compass That Turns With the Seasons

Every person has an inner compass—an instinctual direction that shifts ever so slightly as the season does. Not a moral compass, not a navigational one, but a psychological one.

Seasonal changes affect:

What we crave (pumpkin spice vs cookout and beer)

What we’re afraid of (frozen pipes vs A/C breaking down)

What we’re drawn to (a warm fire vs the pool)

What we hope for (good skiing conditions vs good surf)

How we want to spend our time (hunkered inside vs lounging in the sun)

Aboard your Wharram, you might suddenly feel the urge to tidy the deck, or work on a project, or write longer pieces, or plan new voyages, or simply sit in the cockpit and breathe. I tend to do that far too often.

Just Sit and Breathe

Meanwhile, someone living a thousand miles inland may feel the same urge in a different form—cleaning a closet, rearranging the house, rethinking a career, or letting go of a long-held worry.

The season turns, and hopefully, all of us turn with it.

The Pause Before the Shift

Always, before the new season arrives fully, there’s a pause. A moment when life seems to hover—neither here nor there. A kind of liminality.

This moment is an invitation.

Take stock.

You don’t have to rush.

Something new is coming, meet it at your own pace.

This is the perfect time for reflection aboard a Wharram. For sitting on the trampoline with the sun warming your face. For watching birds and dolphins chasing their meals. For listening to wavelets break on nearby shores.

These small details carry the weight of the season’s approach.

Enjoying the Shift

Life is shifting.

You’re shifting with it.

And the boat is holding you through the transition, just as it has held through all the others.

Stepping Into the New Season

When the new season finally arrives—not all at once, but slowly, with thousands of subtle signals—it feels like the world is exhaling. The air steadies. The world adjusts. You adjust with it.

Maybe you feel a new burst of energy.

Maybe you feel a need for calm.

Maybe you feel ready to create, to rebuild, to explore, to retreat, or to begin again.

None of these reactions are wrong.

Seasonal change isn’t a command; it’s a gentle invitation. The kind that says:

You can shift now, if you’d like. You can move in any new direction you please. You can release something. Or start something. Or simply notice what’s different and let that be enough.

Embracing Cooler Weather

You are part of the cycle as surely as the tides.

And with the cooler season just around the corner.

So are the changes.

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Midnight on the Water

Posted on November 4, 2025 by sgwest66

A quiet midnight trip home turns into a reminder that the world still hums along perfectly well without our supervision.

Out there, alone on dark water, the line between comfort and unease gets beautifully thin.

Night Time Beach

The boat I was using that evening was a Wharram Tiki 21 propelled by an electric trolling motor. The motor’s not fast, and it’s certainly not impressive, but it’s reliable and — most importantly — quiet. The kind of quiet that feels intentional, as though we were trespassing on something delicate. I eased the throttle forward and the boat began to slide away from the dock without so much as a ripple, and I thought: this is what a cat must feels like wandering around at night.

Coming back from dinner with friends the other night, I ended up returning a little later than expected — close to midnight. I hadn’t planned on staying that long. Dinner had that pleasant, lazy rhythm that tends to stretch out when the stories are good, the food is better, and nobody’s checking their watch. We weren’t solving the world’s problems — as people tend to do after a couple of drinks — just talking about them. By the time I got back to our Tangaroa 35 catamaran ‘Curious’, the moon was well up and the water was pitch black.

A few minutes into the trip, I turned off the running lights. Not because I was trying to be rebellious, but because I wanted the dark to swallow me whole. The world immediately changed. The reflections disappeared, the shoreline melted away, and I was left floating in a kind of soft, liquid darkness.

Then, the sounds began.

Sneaky

The water started speaking in tiny languages — clicks, splashes, swirls. Every one of them sounded personal, like a conversation I wasn’t invited to but was close enough to overhear. A fish would strike at the surface with a quick smack, and another would follow with a smaller, less confident version. The whole scene was alive with commotion, both violent and peaceful at the same time.

It struck me that this sort of experience is becoming rare. Most people, even those who live near the water, never really hear it. The background hum of convenience equipment, boat engines are getting ridiculously huge and most waterfronts glow like carnival rides. But there I was, in the dark, traveling at the pace of a slow thought, listening to life happen around me.

The shoreline houses were dark and respectable, the kind that tuck themselves in early. A few porch lights burned like lazy fireflies, and every now and then a motion sensor would flick on — probably because some nocturnal creature had wandered into a suburban security zone. It’s a very “end-of-the-road” sort of neighborhood, the kind where people move to get away from things, and then realize there’s not much left to get away from.

The Dark World

In the glow of a few submerged dock lights, the water took on that eerie aquarium quality — lit from below, with shadows moving through layers of green. The small ones zipped through like nervous commuters, darting in and out of the light, while deeper down larger figures glided through with a kind of ancient patience. I caught sight of something that looked about two feet long, moving slow and deliberate, a shadow that didn’t care about being seen. There’s a hierarchy down there that we only ever glimpse, and I had the distinct impression that most of the sub aquatic residents were avoiding eye contact.

Out past the lights, the black water shimmered with sound. You couldn’t see the surface, but you could hear the stories it was telling — somebody feeding, somebody fleeing. Life and death happening right there beneath me, entirely unbothered by the human world’s sense of importance.

The trees along the shore played their own part in this dark theater. Their moon shadows stretched across the water, long and ghostly, swaying with the light breeze. Every so often, a branch would move in a way that felt intentional, and I’d catch myself staring too long, wondering what exactly was watching whom. Then a bird — usually a heron — would launch from its perch and glide low across the water. When it passed close, it would let out a loud squawk, and every time it startled me just enough to be grateful for my mortality.

There’s something about being alone in the dark that resets the ego. You stop being the protagonist of your own story and start feeling more like background noise. The water doesn’t care what kind of day you’ve had. The fish aren’t interested in your ambitions or concerns. Even the moon seems vaguely amused that you’re still awake.

And yet, it’s oddly comforting — this reminder that you’re small, temporary, and entirely replaceable. People pay good money for mindfulness retreats to learn that. All you really need is a quiet motor, a moonlit waterway, and the nerve to turn the lights off.

From The Reeds

At one point I cut the motor and just let the boat drift. There was no wind, no current worth mentioning — just the slow rotation of the world and the tiny movements of creatures below. The hull made faint creaking noises when I moved, and occasionally something bumped against it, a polite knock from below that said, “You’re in my way.” I thought of all the times I’d been too busy to notice how alive the night really is, and how most of us mistake silence for emptiness. It’s not empty at all. It’s just occupied by things that don’t need to announce themselves.

The smell of the water was stronger in the dark — that earthy mix of salt, mud, and something indefinably alive. Every sense gets sharper when you can’t rely on sight. The faint hum of insects, the whisper of reeds as creature pushes through, even the occasional splash of something heavy just out of view — all of it added up to a kind of music. Not the sort you hum along to, but the sort that fills you without asking permission.

It was around then that I started feeling the edge of that peculiar loneliness that’s equal parts comfort and unease. You know the one — when you’re the only human around for what feels like miles, and you can’t decide whether to feel lucky or mildly doomed. I was never in any real danger, but there’s an unmistakable awareness that comes when you realize nature could flick you off the map with less effort than you spend swatting a mosquito.

I began to think about how rare true darkness has become. Our modern world has been lit up so thoroughly that we’ve forgotten what it looks like without us. The stars overhead seemed almost relieved to have someone notice them. They were bright enough to cast a faint reflection on the water, little trembling echoes of light that looked like they were trying to climb back into the sky.

Somewhere in the distance, a mullet jumped, because that’s what mullet do — for reasons known only to themselves. A heron gave a single, exasperated squawk from the shoreline, probably protesting my presence. Every sound felt amplified and significant. It’s funny how, in daylight, we ignore half of what we hear, but at night, each sound feels like a clue to a mystery we’ll never solve.

Drifting there, I started thinking — as one does when given too much quiet — about how most of us spend our days surrounded by noise, filling every silence as if it were a gap in programming. Music, podcasts, the constant hum of engines and conversation. Out here, none of that applied. The night had its own rhythm, and it didn’t need accompaniment.

Night Anchorage

I remembered something a friend once said after his first night anchoring out alone: “You don’t sleep much the first few nights — not because you’re scared, but because you keep realizing how alive everything else is.” I understood that perfectly now. Out here, the water and the air trade secrets you can’t quite hear.

After a while, I turned the motor back on — just a whisper of thrust — and began to make my way home. The shoreline slipped by like a series of sketches: the faint outline of a dock, the dark silhouette of a mangrove, a forgotten buoy bobbing lazily. Every little thing looked more meaningful than it did in daylight, as if night were the original artist and daylight just the copyist.

As I drew closer to my boat, I passed through one of those underwater light zones again. The fish were still there, swirling in silent chaos. I slowed to a stop just to watch. It struck me how effortless their world seemed — dangerous, yes, but honest. Nobody was pretending to be something they weren’t. You eat or you’re eaten. You hide or you’re seen. It’s not a system built for comfort, but it’s fair in its own way.

A few minutes later, I reached my catamaran Curious. The deck boards creaked under my weight, the ropes strained a little, and the familiar smells of wood and ropes met me. The house lights in the distance looked warm, civilized, and slightly out of place — like they belonged to another world that hadn’t yet figured out how to enjoy the dark.

I climbed up on deck and just stood there for a while, listening while my kitty cat came up from the cabin, yawned and stretched beside me. The night went on exactly as it had before I arrived — unconcerned, unaltered. A breeze came through the trees, and somewhere out on the water, another fish jumped, probably startled by nothing at all.

It occurred to me that we spend most of our lives trying to make the world convenient, easier, safer — and in doing so, we lose touch with this small, wild truth: that being part of the world means being at its mercy now and then. It’s humbling in the best way.

Quiet Glow

As I finally dropped below, I looked back once more at the still water. The surface reflected a few stars, the faint glow from a distant porch light, and not much else. I thought of all the creatures going about their nightly business, utterly indifferent to my brief intrusion. And I felt something close to gratitude — not for the adventure, but for the reminder that the world doesn’t need me to keep turning.

I went to bed that night with the portholes open, listening to the faint slap of water against the hull, and thought: maybe that’s the secret to peace — not mastering the night, but learning to drift quietly through it.

Sometimes the best part of being alone on the water isn’t the peace — it’s the perspective. You see the quiet cruelty and quiet beauty living side by side, both part of the same system that keeps going whether we’re there to notice or not. It’s humbling, a little eerie, and exactly the sort of thing that makes life afloat feel so rich.

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The Art of Just Living

Posted on October 27, 2025 by sgwest66

There’s an odd thing about life that nobody ever tells you straight. You’re taught how to make a living, but not how to actually live.

At school we’re driven to learn about fractions, state capitals, and the proper spelling of “Mississippi,” but not one teacher will ever sit you down and say, “Listen,—life is mostly about learning to sit with yourself without wanting to throw a chair through the window.” Which is, when you think about it, a much more practical lesson.

Simple

We are so preoccupied with achievement, acquisition, and arranging our calendars into neat little blocks of self-importance that we forget there is an art form more subtle than piano, more challenging than oil painting, and more elusive than tightrope walking: the art of just living. Not living well in the way glossy magazines mean—perfect kitchens, toned arms, weekend yoga retreats—but simply living. Being here. Existing without apology, without fanfare, without the endless business of improvement.

It’s a skill that takes decades to master, and even then, you’ll slip. Sometimes you’ll catch yourself trying to turn your morning coffee into a productivity hack (“Bulletproof coffee, guaranteed to make you twice as unbearable at meetings!”). Other times, you’ll fall for the siren call of self-optimization, as if downloading another meditation app will help you breathe better than the lungs you were born with. And yet, every now and then, you stumble into a quiet moment of unpolished living—watching the cat stretch in the sun, stirring sugar into tea, or standing barefoot on a patch of cool grass—and you realize: Ahh, this is it. This is the thing.

It Just Feels Good

Chapter One: The Trouble with Living

The trouble with living is that most of us treat it like a career path. You’re meant to “make something of yourself,” which is an alarming phrase if you pause to think about it. What, exactly, are you right now—nothing? A lump of clay? A misplaced sock? The idea of “make something of yourself” suggests that existing, just as you are, is a bit of a half-baked effort, like bread pulled from the oven too soon.

So we go about patching ourselves up with goals, titles, and possessions. Some people collect degrees, others collect children, and still others collect pairs of running shoes that may never touch a pavement. We look for evidence of a life well-lived in external trophies. Yet none of it really proves much of anything. I’ve met three-story houses who are emptier than a local swimming pool in Winter. I’ve met fishermen, with weathered hands and sunburnt noses, who are wealthier in contentment than a banker with a retirement account that could fund a small island.

Basic Simplicity

And here’s where the humor creeps in. Because if you take the human race at face value, we’re a fairly ridiculous species. We invent devices to save time and then use that saved time to invent more devices. We now install apps on our phones to track our steps and then spend hours sitting down scrolling through how many steps we haven’t taken. We rush through meals so we can rush through work so we can rush home and “relax,” only to find ourselves too wired to actually enjoy it.

If an alien anthropologist were to study us, I imagine its report would read something like:

“Our subject species spend 80 years attempting to figure out how to enjoy 80 years. Success rate: questionable.”

Chapter Two: The Gentle Rebellion of Slowing Down

If there’s any real art to just living, it begins with slowing down. And slowing down is its own kind of rebellion. It is the refusal to be hurried into existence, the audacity to say: I will not live my life as though I’m late for a train that never arrives.

Take mornings, for instance. Most people greet the day as though it’s an opponent in the boxing ring. Alarm goes off, adrenaline spikes, and suddenly you’re punching your way through showers, coffee, emails, and traffic. But mornings are not meant for fighting. They’re meant for stretching, yawning, shuffling about in slippers, and standing aimlessly in the kitchen wondering if bread counts as breakfast (it does).

When you slow down, life reveals its details. You can enjoy the warmth of the coffee mug in your hand. Taste, and appreciate, the difference between good butter and nasty, cheap butter. You realize that the neighbor’s dog barks at the mailman every morning at precisely 9:17, as though the dog has been hired by the Post Office as a form of occupational hazard. These little details are where living actually happens, always rushing can bury this awareness.

And it’s funny isn’t it, that we can pay fortunes to travel the world in search of meaning, yet miss it entirely in our own world? Consider these two scenarios.

# “I once spent an afternoon in Fiji talking to a man who owned nothing but a canoe and a couple of coconuts, and he was one of the most peaceful souls I’d ever met.”

# “I once spent an afternoon in a boardroom listening to executives argue over font size on a PowerPoint slide.”

Which of these afternoons was closer to living than the other.

Chapter Three: The Cult of Busyness

Of course, slowing down isn’t fashionable. If you admit to not being busy, people look at you as though you’ve confessed to stealing their garden gnome. Being busy, and stressed from work is our modern badge of honor. Ask anyone how they’re doing, and most will say something to effect of, “Mate, I’ve been flat out like a lizard drinking!” It’s a humblebrag disguised as suffering.

Just Keep Pushing

We even compete over it. “You’re busy? Well, I’ve been so busy I haven’t had a proper meal since February.” “Oh, that’s nothing. I’ve been so busy I haven’t seen my children since they were babes-in-arms, and now they’re leaving home.”

What nobody wants to admit is that busyness is often just noise. A kind of frantic filler to avoid the terror of sitting quietly with oneself, risk being bored. Because in that silence, the big questions come up. Who am I? What am I doing here? Have I made good life decisions. Should I finally fix that leaking tap? And heaven forbid we face those.

The art of just living requires courage—the courage to do less, to own less, to expect less. And that can be terrifying in a world that insists that more is always better.

Chapter Four: The Joy of the Ordinary

One of the most overlooked truths about life is that the ordinary is not something to escape from; it is in fact the the marrow of existence. Yet we’ve been tricked into thinking joy lies elsewhere—in exotic vacations, promotions, or Instagram-worthy milestones. Ordinary things are treated as the background music of our lives, when I think they should be thought of as the symphony.

Consider the afternoon cup of tea. Not the fancy ceremonial kind, but the humble, chipped-mug, bag-left-in-too-long sort of tea. To me, that first sip on a quiet afternoon contains more wisdom than a hundred self-help books. It says: here you are, still alive, still capable of enjoying the small quiet moments. Or even consider the laundry—yes, laundry. Pulling warm clothes from the dryer on a cold day is one of those mundane joys that deserves a parade.

Just Enjoy The Moment

Francis Whiting, with her subtle humor, would tell you this: life is not made of grand declarations but of the tiny stitches that hold the day together. A laugh with a stranger. Enjoy the smell of garlic frying in the pan. The squeak of a floorboard you’ve stepped on a thousand times.

Each night my cat prowls over my bunk around two in the morning gently meowing, and half purring. I used to get frustrated and grumpy with him, but now it’s usually a reminder that he’s in my life looking after me, and I should get up and check the anchorage situation,…and maybe get him some treats.

When you start noticing and appreciating the ordinary, it can grow into the extraordinary. The way afternoon sunlight splashes through the trees. The way rain sounds different depending on whether it hits tin, glass, or leaves. The way kitchen aromas drift up from the galley. This is living. Not glamorous, not headline-worthy, but profoundly real.

Chapter Five: Humor as Survival

Let’s not forget the importance of humor in all this. Life, left unjoked about, can become unbearable. Commitments pile up, our body starts to creak, repairs need to be done, and when it’s all said and done, we all end up in the same place (spoiler: it’s in the ground). Without humor, the weight of life could crush us. As the saying goes, “Don’t take life too seriously, you’ll never get out alive.” With humor, even misery becomes tolerable.

Think about how often laughter sneaks into life’s bleakest corners. Hospitals, for example. The sickest wards are often filled with the loudest jokes. Or funerals, where stories of the departed bring both tears and giggles. Humor is how we remind ourselves that while life may not always be under our control, our perspective on it can be, and is good to be cheeky.

Personally, I find the universe has a wicked sense of humor. You finally save enough to buy a reliable car, and the week after, someone invents teleportation. You spend years learning how to cook, and suddenly the doctor tells you to avoid everything that tastes good. Or you carefully plan your future, and then a pigeon decides you’d make an excellent target.

The art of just living is, in part, learning to laugh at these cosmic pranks.

Chapter Six: The Unfinished Masterpiece

Here’s the thing though, no one ever fully masters the art of just living, and maybe that’s the point. If you could graduate a course of “Living 101” with a certificate, it would stop being life and become a program.

Living is messy. It’s full of days when you don’t want to get out of bed, of weeks when nothing goes right, and years that feel like a misprint. It’s also full of wonderful moments that sneak up on you—the kind that makes you laugh at the sheer audacity of being alive at all.

You’re not meant to have it figured out. You’re meant to stumble through, collecting scraps of wisdom, the way a beachcomber collects shells. Some will be broken, some complete, and some sharp enough to cut you, but all of them are proof that you were here, that you walked along the shore of existence and that you paid attention.

Take The Small Moments

Epilogue: Practicing the Art

So how do we practice the art of just living?

Notice the small things. They are part of the bigger picture.

Reject busyness. Wear your free time like a badge of honor.

Laugh often. Especially at yourself.

Be ordinary. It’s the most extraordinary thing you can be.

Don’t take it too seriously. Nobody gets out alive.

In the end, the art of just living is less about achievement and more about surrender. Less about carving life into a masterpiece and more about sitting in the sun, afternoon drinks, and realizing that the masterpiece was here all along.

So sit. Breathe. Watch the cat stretch. Laugh when the toast burns. Smile at the absurdity of it all. You’re not behind. You’re not missing out. You’re not unfinished.

You are practicing the Art of Just Living.

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