Thanks and Merry Christmas!
THE LIST
I just wanted to get a quick list of things I am glad I already have – and am so thankful for – out to you while the mood allows for it.
Utmost thanks for my caring and tolerant spouse who has enough to do in her retirement rewirement years so as not to bat an eye when I tell her, “I gotta go see a man about a fish,” and load up for another solo trip out to wherever I am going that day. Thanks for those four-legged dogs left behind who also act like I never left even if away for days. Finny, Finster the Finn has turned out to be a real piece of work … I mean a lot of work! Still, I say that dogs, most dogs, are proof of angels on earth. They are here to make your heart, then break your heart.
I am thankful for what is left of my physical health, and recovery four years after the fact. If someone would have told me it would take three years before I became myself again? I simply thought the remains of my physical body – a pile of bones – were what was going to be left after the ordeal, but good things started happening between years three and four – not great, not great big, but simply good things. Through all the physical tribulations I had great family support, and still do. I am thankful for those of you who still ask and still care about how I am doing, and those living and dead who stepped in to support my survival. I also cherish those of you I met, and befriended because of our illnesses, few departed and many that remain. What a wonderful silver lining you are!
While I don’t have a lot of close friends, I believe a lot of friends still read what shows up here – no matter how off base, or how fish pornographic it gets. Through these writings of the last fourteen years, some have remained, and some have disappeared into other interests, their own lives and living them out elsewhere. Thanks for visiting my life, directly or indirectly. Then there are those that have hung in there, actually become FRIENDS of a closer more personal nature, those who care, those who share in common this blood-borne contagious disease called fly fishing. You few invite me along on your flights of fly fishing fantasy, and I go maybe for a day or even a week, on trips to places I may never be able to go otherwise. My reciprocating is wholly inadequate, but I always harbor the thought that someday I will be able to adequately return the grandest of gestures. And some of you closer friends are riders along with me, and I welcome appreciate your company and your skills on the bow of the skiff – every – single – cast. If one wants to really know another, simply put them on the bow of your boat and show them fish. It cuts through everything – especially when they hook you on their backcast!
If I didn’t have to do the math of my career path, my life would be perfect – full stop last paragraph. But, we below the line, and above the age of being in demand are caught in quite a predicament these days. And this coming decade will. I predict, be a lot more tumultuous for my demographic than the last. As I write this now, come February 2020 I will find myself rolled back to a personal income equal to that of September 2018 … that’s a rollback to $0.00 on the real-world income and of course no health insurance to go with that. How about that? What’s better? Have all the money and no time to spend it, or have all the time in the world and no money? People seem to think I should be thankful for my brief (I say dead-end) foray into punching the clock these past fourteen months, but I’m not. Nobody wants to be shown the door for their age do they? SO, I will just be thankful for whatever is next come February 2020. Isn’t life interesting? The battle between the “Haves and Have Nots” will obviously be center stage in 2020 don’t you think?
I am thankful for the fish, the Fish Gods, and the God of fish. I know that is a loaded sentence, but fish slime smoothes the rough edges of our souls and getting slapped in the face by a huge tail splash of water is the baptism, the holy water that protects us from evil always close by.
MERRY CHRISTMAS to you all, and fasten your seatbelt for 2020. We’re in for a bumpy ride.
Category: Backcasting, Body-Mind-Soul, OFF TOPIC
