Dear Bloggers,


Again a 44 year old guy that I knew died al of a sudden for no known reason. How bitter can life be in these moments you wonder if it is all worth it.
This is a tremendous load to carry for the ones that stay behind and have to go on with their lives. It is time to start living my dear friends and make something good out of it.

Sometimes you think: Does my life seem more difficult than it needs to be? It sucks when life is hard. It is so depressing and tiring.
You feel completely stuck and it is extremely difficult to figure out why.

You want to move on to better things, but somehow you keep bumping up against an invisible obstacle that holds you right where you are.
It can be frustrating and downright maddening.

Reasons why Your life Is hard

“It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you that you have to carry it.”

I understand just how upsetting it can be when you feel life is being hard on you.
That’s why I want to help you figure out what’s going on.

However, I need to tell you that it is going to take a little patience and open-mindedness on your part to solve this mystery.

You might read some things below that you don’t like at first.
In fact, if you start reading something that really bothers you, that’s probably what you need to hear the most.

Here are three reasons that your life may seem hard:

1. Arrogance

No one likes to be told they are arrogant. So, right from the start, I’m testing your willingness to really take an honest look at yourself and your attitudes.

Are you being stubborn? Sometimes we simply persist on a particular path when life is telling us to go another way.

Trying to swim against the current is difficult and it will make your life rocky. You may be too stubborn to admit a) you’ve been wrong, b) you need to change and c) this is the source of your trouble. This is arrogance, plain and simple.

I see this a lot around health issues. You may have a bad habit that is playing havoc with your health, but you don’t want to give it up. This makes your life hard, but you arrogantly persist. Eventually, this will get the better of you. One way or the other, if you ignore the warnings, you will pay and pay and pay. Often difficulties are simply life’s way of telling you that you need to change. Your life would be so much easier and enjoyable if you’d just listen to what it is trying to tell you. Humble yourself and listen. Then be willing to make some adjustments. You’ll be happy you did.

2. Inexperience

Life can sometimes seem much harder than it has to be simply due to inexperience.
You may be facing things you haven’t had to deal with before and that you lack preparation to handle.

This can certainly make life seem laborious and painful. When you lack experience with a particular matter, you also lack the skill, judgment and understanding that make things a whole lot easier to handle. This is no fault of yours, but the quicker you realize and admit that your inexperience is an issue, the faster you can fix it.

If you think your difficulties are due to inexperience, then there are a few ways that you can overcome this and make things easier on yourself.

Here are some ways I’ve dealt with difficulties due to inexperience in my own life:
Find a very targeted action plan to guide you – A prewritten plan from someone that’s successfully navigated the waters you’re in right now can be invaluable.

Find an experienced mentor for advice – A good mentor will have the experience you lack and be able to guide you through the trouble you are facing.

Find a book that will teach you what you need to know – There seems to be a book on practically every subject imaginable. Find one for your specific needs and educate yourself.

Just because you lack experience doesn’t mean that you have to wallow in it. Take the bull by the horns and get some help to ease the trouble you are facing. Things will smooth out once you do.

3. Pure Circumstances

I’ve lived long enough to know that occasionally, you just hit a rough patch in life that is purely circumstantial.

In other words, it is out of your control. You didn’t do anything to deserve what you are getting. God isn’t mad at you. You aren’t being punished.
You are just going through a tough time and sometimes when it rains, it pours. It is Murphy’s Law, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”

I’ve certainly had a few of these periods in my own life. They are tough, but you can live through it.

When circumstances aren’t going your way, you just have to do your best and keep yourself from slipping off the edge.

Remember the old adage, “What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.” Unfortunately, these spells can last awhile sometimes.

You just have to control what you can and deal with the rest.
I wished there was some better advice I had to offer, but once in awhile life gives you an endurance test. Your job is to weather the storm even if it is long and difficult.
The one encouraging thing I can tell you is that it will eventually end.

The sun will rise again. Trust me, better days are ahead for you if you just keep plugging along doing the best you can.

What Is Making Your Life Hard?

Okay, so did any of this help? Have you decided what is making your life hard?

Is it arrogance, inexperience or just plain old circumstances?

Figuring this out is the crucial first step toward making things better. Usually, just thinking about it in these ways helps. You are going to get through this and when you do, the happiness you experience will be that much sweeter.

Tell me about your difficulties in the comments section, I might have an answer or maybe not.
Often, writing out your troubles will help you organize your thoughts about them.
Plus, you might help someone else along the way.

The Old Sailor,

Did I fail in this life?

Dear Bloggers,


This week I have been transfered again to my old station and had to pick up on my knowledge again. In a way I feel happy on the other hand reality is that they could not find anyone else. I have at this moment the feeling that the things that happened in my life so far have only brought me more and more worries about the future. How do you know if your life is a failure or a success? Many queries are bubbling up in my brain, it is busy in there it’s like a real autmn storm in my little grey area.

Or, maybe instead, how do you know if your life is a success?

What are the criteria? Who gets to decide? Is your life a failure if you are send to prison? If your kids go to prison? Are you a failure if you don’t do what you want to do for a living? If you don’t do what are you supposed to do for a career? Or if you made once a mistake do you get the blame forever? Unless you are being protected by people on higher positions you might have a chance to make some mistakes.

When is it too late to fix it?

Considering that a life includes many stages and levels, maybe the answer is always subject to qualifications and/or temporary current circumstances. Maybe a person can always make amends and change. Or, maybe it is part of the human condition that we are always just a few degrees away from either success or failure…and the decisions we are always making are constantly swinging the pendulum back and forth.

The person that goes to prison can reform. The person responsible for a drunk driving accident can make amends. The person commiting adultery can quit. The person engaging in destructive behaviour towards other people can stop. It is a kind of nature that we are like wolves, if there is no strong pack leader the other ones might tear you apart.

Or, maybe they cannot?

Maybe the criteria are locked and fixed. Maybe the hands of fate don’t allow for a second and third chance. Maybe our flaws are too many to overcome. Maybe even those with apparent success are hiding significant faults.

Is it only at death that we are judged as good or bad, success or failure?

Decisions made years ago, and early in life, have a bearing on incidents that happen later in life. No one is ever truly able to escape their past. Decisions made at one point with the confidence of correctness can later be determined as incorrect. Time marches on. Nothing is ever over. Does this knowledge force us into a state of intellectual paralysis?

Does enlightenment occur from the knowledge of this pendulum of good versus evil and success versus failure? Maybe those that are aware of the precarious balance are thus successful as a result, while those who are oblivious are failing…will fail…can’t stop from failing.

You need to set some goals in this life. Altruism, kindness, generosity…those are universally recognizable and realistic goals. Those are goals that benefit both the individual and society as a whole. Pursuit and realization of those goals should probably allow a person to be considered as successful.

Failing to follow those guiding principles…well, failure is as failure does.

So, are we feeling sorry for those that don’t get it? Can we help those that choose to make mistakes? Can we look the other way while they fail? And, are we then also failures as long as there are those without the knowledge of this path to enlightenment…those who fail to see it…those who fail to do what is right…those who just fail? It’s a philosophical thing that keeps my mind running.

“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”

My thoughts might sound kind of negative somekind of dark and people may call me a doomthinker. I really wander how can I change things into better prospectives? I feel that I have failed on many things in my life. It has been a long time ago that i felt successful.

On the other hand i did do in a way quite well. But who am I kidding actually as the last few years everything went downwards. When I had to stop sailing my income fell with more than 40% in a year, I got a body to live in that only works on half power and is painful every day. Yes I became trapped in my future plans and there is no light that guides me to the end of the tunnel. Now I am renting myself out to get my hours filled as the holiday season is coming. For crying out loud no one cares about you or your feelings.

“It is no use lying to one’s self.”

I have trouble to stay positive in this jungle of emotions. Must I just stay positive when everything in life turns you down? I live in a house that is hardly sellable, a job with an uncertain future, I drive an old car which I cannot replace due to less and less work. My family suffers from it as well and everyone has it’s own needs. Are we slowly going our own way and what happened to the unity?

Honesty and the right action determines success…regardless of the endeavour…anything and everything short of that is failure.

The Old Sailor,

winter is on the way

Dear Bloggers,


This morning it was five o’clock to get up and get to work. As soon as I had my breakfast and rubbed the sleep out of my face, I open the curtains to few the world who looks brutal and dark at this time of day. When I walk to the car I feel the cold air tipping on my nose. It is a big difference to last week as temperatures have dropped to 6 degrees Celcius.


It’s getting cold. The nights are starting to draw in while the mornings seem to take forever to stir. I’m beginning to slow down, to curl up in bed for ‘just 10 more minutes’ in the mornings, to seek out sleep earlier in the evenings. I’m walking slowly, as my body is getting stiffer more painful again but surely this will be my first winter in a better shape than the last couple of years.

I’ve never found winter an easy season. Everything seems stark, minimal and asleep. My hands and feet wish to retreat into my body as they become freezing cold and numb. The layers I have to wear drive me nuts because I’m too hot inside and yet freezing outside. I feel constricted by all the clothes needed to keep me warm and I long for the days when I can slip on a pair of flip-flops, a pair of shorts and a t-shirt .



A week ago people hopped on the bus wearing t-shirts, summer dresses and shorts. Today I saw the first ones wearing gloves, hats, caps and scarfs. The air is cold and chilly and slowly night is turning into day. The hard blue sky is bautiful and explains the bittter cold breeze that hangs around. You can imagine that they were quite happy that I had turned on the heater in the bus. It is strange that in such a short period the leaves have turned colours and cold weather took position, weather men predict a cold and snowy winter. And that will spice up the job again as delays give trouble and I think that it is really funny.

For me, winter is all about slowing down, about stripping bare, going back to basics. It’s about inventing new ways of living a full life that focuses the majority of the time on indoor pursuits. It’s about connecting with friends and family, sharing the warmth of the holidays together. It’s about generosity with your neighbors, wishing each other well in this darker season. It’s about ruminating on the fact of life that everything one day will die.


We are still a good couple of months away from ice, winter woolies and the festive season, but already I’m preparing myself for the shifts my body and mind will need to take in the coming months. I want to take the next few months as an opportunity to reflect on my life thus far, to question ‘who I am’ right now and who I will be when this body also sheds its last leaf.

I want to take more time to sit, to question, to think about the circle of life, the parts of me that are dying in order for me to be reborn again next spring and who that makes ‘me’ when the old is perpetually falling away to make room for the new. It makes me sad as i realize how many people that have left us in the last couple of years. On the other hand I see my eldest daughter turning into a woman. Someday there will be the first love and a new circle begins.


I hope that the winter will not be to harsh and not to many snowdays as they only cost money. I start the car and drive into the darkness of the early morning with the radio playing softly and the heating is on full power. So, when I’m up in the dead black of the early morning and nothing is stirring, what will my first thoughts and actions be in that moment? Who will I choose to be when the world appears to be so still as if it’s not yet breathing? How will I make those moments count at a time when it’s much easier just to indulge in the warmth of my bed and my dreams?

The Old Sailor,