04
Dec 13

Live the choice, love the choice

I want to share this video with you all. I deeply enjoy some of the people connected with this project. I’ve fished Andros with Rebecca and Florida with Matt. I have talked to both of them at some length and I like them immensely as people. They are good souls. This movie has a lot of their souls exposed. You can pick them up, turn them around in your fingers and feel their grit. It’s heartfelt. A Deliberate Life.

Watching this now I do feel I have some perspective. I’ve gone through a few big shocks and changes in the past few years and I’ve come through all of it really better than could be expected.

I could have really tried to make a full go at living the passion when I got laid off in August. I really considered it and I had the support of my wife in doing so (she’s awesome). However, I ended up going a different route (although I’m still doing some work for Angling Destinations and who knows, maybe that will be what I do, full time, at some point down the line). I opted for Sales Client Services. I made a choice to talk to people about Heparin Antibody Panels and Platelet Aggregation instead of talking to people about fishing Andros/Los Roques/Belize.

I’m about 99.8% sure I made the right choice. I’m happy in it. I’m content in my work. It was a choice I made deliberately, consciously and of my own will.

In the wake of my divorce I made the decision I would be happy (although I’m a happy person, naturally, it has to be said). It was an easy choice for me, but there are plenty of folks who have not gone that route when faced with that particular fork in the road. Fast forward to today and I’m happily remarried and expecting a son any day now. I made a choice and lived that choice. Good things followed.

So maybe living deliberately isn’t as simple as just giving up your corporate gig to chase trout or bonefish or pike. Maybe it is about being wakeful in the choosing and loving your choice. That’s what I’m taking away from A Deliberate Life.


13
Jun 13

The view from other eyes

Thought I’d share a few posts about FL from the eyes of some of the other peeps who were there…

Adrienne Comeau writing at The Female Angle.

Matt Smythe (also known as “The Hair”) writing at FishingPoet.

The Hair

The Hair

 


15
Jun 12

Fly Fishing Poet and the Salt

Matt, aka the Fly Fishing Poet, got down to Florida to go throw in the salt for the first time.  I haven’t made it down to the Keys since I was 10 (I loved in then… wanted to be a treasure hunter as a kid, which I know makes no sense as a mountain bound Californian).

A damn fine read. Here’s a taste…

Islamorada, I’m here and everything about you is foreign to me. Timeless retro hotel and diner and marina signs. Languid, saronged women in their generous brown skin and strong, salty women in their salty brown skin. Bar-top sweat-rings telling stories between drinks. Backcountry islands hovering on the teal horizon.

Check out the full story here (and it is worth it).

Go time.

 

PS – Matt has a story in Pulp Fly, which you should totally buy (for Kindle and anything that can handle Kindle books, like iPads).


19
Jan 12

He’s a Poet afterall

Turns out Matt Smythe won the Haiku contest over at Deneki.

It makes sense. He does have the blog “FishingPoet.”

Matt, just so you know, is a contributor to a soon-to-be-released ebook anthology of fly fishing short fiction called Pulp Fly. You’ll be hearing more about that little project very, very soon.

(This, it says, is my 1,000th post, just so you know)