Welcome to gone fishing.
Thanks for tuning in. These are just my thoughts – some journals from on the road, in the air; from here and elsewhere.
I don’t fish, but sometimes it feels as if I have spent the better part of my twenties waiting for a bite. Like I have been bobbing in a small boat out under the sun or in a plane or on a motorcycle. In 2024, with 30 on the not-distant-enough horizon, it feels as if the motor is kicking on. The waters haven’t changed so much as I am suddenly conscious that I am expending gas and it is near the middle of the day already. Many days it feels as if I still haven’t caught The Big One. I am doing less reading now and holding the fishing reel with both hands. It is time to get serious.
This publication is my personal passion-meets-portfolio project. If I had been born a decade later, this would probably be a TikTok. As it stands, I am less of a “content creator” than I am a fisherman. And I don’t fish.
Perhaps I’m more of an anxious paranoiac than anything. If I were being kinder to myself, I might say that makes me thoughtful and observant. A greater wordsmith than I has likely put it better.
If I were a good enough guy maybe I could have been a good painter. Maybe I’m just enough of a son of a bitch to be a good writer.
Ernest Hemingway, Islands in the Stream
At any rate, I’ve got some miles under my heels (knock on wood) in either direction.
I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to have traveled and traveled well in my twenties. Many forces beyond my control conspired to make this reality possible and, just as important, many important people believed in me.
These are my letters to those forces, those people, and that boy in the boat who once daydreamed about visiting the places I now think fondly back on every day.
So… what is gone fishing?
Please find enclosed thoughts and impressions collected from a young adulthood of lofty aspirations and inescapable realities. Among the archives that are gone fishing, I share my notes on memories and impressions collected from places and experiences that have made me feel both alive and encumbered by the human condition, such as:
If you’re coming along, pack a light lunch and expect to encounter some travel tidbits with the occasional swipe at something that might be called gonzo journalism (if you can consider a 20-something hammock-hopping news junkie a journalist… not much to debate about the gonzo part). If I do this right, you’re at least guaranteed a new perspective from a different part of the world every time.
Thank you for reading and subscribing!
gone fishing is sometimes inspired by traveling and journals kept on the road, and always made possible by the people who care enough to read it.
Thank you for your continued support, or for just dropping by. This is just the beginning, so come back again and bring your friends.
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gone fishing, like its author, is very much a work in progress. As this develops and I find my niche, I hope to publish regular newsletters someday, possibly to begin sharing longer-form pieces or even poetry with exclusive paid subscribers. I might be working on a book or a story or some other project right now, at this moment — as you read this. More likely, I am taking a nap or at work.
But when I can, I’m writing.
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