Up late on the eve of my 47^th birthday. Drinking vodka and Sprite. Eating sour Twizzlers. Looking at the flies I purchased from Orvis during a 70% off sale.

Finally, they’re here.

The media shows a world going to hell, but selfish me, I’ve been thinking about fishing. Checking the mailbox twice a day for the past week. It’s not that I don’t care about the state of the world. I do. That’s why I’d rather be wading a stream. Balancing on an uneven surface. Casting into sunlight that shimmers on ripples. Landing line under low-hanging branches. Near the banks. Onto swirling dark pools. Over deadfalls. All as life expands and contracts, creatures living and dying and growing and fighting, giving birth and murdering, all around me.

And if you take a moment to remove yourself from where you’re at by looking up—maybe through a basement window at pinholes of light in a black sky, as you type and drink and think, letting yourself be taken away like a lure in uncertain current—you will consider and appreciate all of this. No matter how dark and fluid and out of control it may be.

Fight the urge to fall into the roles they make for you.

Explore all that’s not shown in your own good time.

Let yourself be moved by this experience. Even if it’s a bit of boozy self-indulgence, marveling at colorful flies tied by mysterious hands, as you await the arrival of another year.

~ KJ