I'm ready to Get Drunk again

"There will never be enough money," I said. "You just have to make the decision and do it."
We were talking about jobs and seasons abroad and going back to the "real world" off boats, off payroll, onto budgets and rent and depleted savings.
(and family and community and queen sized beds and real weekends off)

Some talked about "getting through" a year; I don't believe that setting yourself up to "get through" instead of enjoy a year is a positive way to live your life. Yes of course there are hardships to overcome and in those times "getting through" is more positive than "being so fucking miserable you cry yourself to sleep every night and can't see the end," but when you have the choice, when you can actually avoid just "getting through," how is it even an option?
And even when the "getting through" isn't so bad, why would you choose that over the possibility for change, growth, happiness, adventure?

That's when the engineer chimed in. "That's why you went cruising," he said to me. "There are some people who go and others who never leave the dock."
I told him about the "cruisers" J and I had met while we were fixing up our own little boat in Ensenada and San Diego. They had boats in far better condition than our simple Gitane yet they were spending years fixing and acquiring and breaking and fixing and improving and (procrastinating) planning instead of just going. We could have spent years fixing up Gitane to make her the "perfect" cruiser, but instead we left with ragged shorts and a paltry amount in the bank, SSB and solar panel stashed down below to be hooked up (eventually), varnish peeling but sails full of wind, hull solid and ready for six thousand miles at sea.

The engineer smiled his Renaissance man smile and asked if I had heard of "Get Drunk" by Baudelaire.

I may be bad at settling down, but I'm good at getting drunk in the way that Baudelaire wished. Sometimes it takes me awhile to realize that I'm sober, but eventually the reality sinks in and action soon follows:

Get Drunk
by Charles Baudelaire

Always be drunk.
That's it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time's horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
Get drunk and stay that way.
On what?
On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.
And if you sometimes happen to wake up
on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that flees,
everything that groans
or rolls
or sings,
everything that speaks,
ask what time it is;
and the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock
will answer you:
"Time to get drunk!
Don't be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!"

(there are many translations from French of Monsieur Baudelaire's poem "Get Drunk," but I like the simplicity of this one. And I like the word 'fardel'.)

Cheers