Everyone was always talking about how the pressures of the week would be pulled away by the river’s currents. But that morning, it just felt like the water was one more thing pressing against him.
He hadn’t been fly fishing for long. In the past half dozen months he had accumulated all the essential gear. The casting came easy enough. Finding spots to try was intimidating, but he relied on the kindness of online message boards. The same few flies were in his normal rotation. Most importantly, a trout or two came to hand nearly every time he went out. But each time he felt that tug he was surprised; unsure about what he’d done differently to chance into a fish on that particular cast.
The haphazard nature of the actual fishing was a bit concerning. Learning was always something he enjoyed. While not overly materialistic, he did like getting shiny new things that served a purpose. The community of other fly fishers seemed authentic and pleasant and legitimately helpful. But still, there was this nagging feeling that he didn’t know what he was doing out there. He was just out there. Occasionally, a fish made a mistake.
Work was stressful. Quotas were just out of reach. While the environment and the tenor of team emails were benign enough, he had been at it long enough to know that falling short was not something that was sustainable. It had been a hard month. And this wasn’t the first hard month. Reasons, given enough times, become excuses. He fully expected that the meeting notifications for Monday would be corrective in nature. Fair; but not fun.
Fishing this Saturday was his attempt to take his mind off that anticipation. He was distracting himself at a stream in which he had been able to catch fish with relative consistency. About ten minutes in, something had grabbed his fly and pulled hard for a few seconds. Almost before he knew it, his line went slack again. The sense of failure mounted. Now he had a bad week at work and a bad start to what was supposed to be the remedy for a bad week at work.
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