Lucky me!

During a recent conversation with a good (fishing) friend, he asked me how much I fish a year. I really hadn't thought that much about it, and his question made me count.

Looking back over the last two or three years revealed a number of days much larger than I had imagined and larger than I expect most of my fellow fishers could hope for.

Last year I fished about two months! This year is past that already, and I expect to be able to put in many more fishing days in my local waters these last moths of the year.

Two months! That's about 60 fishing days in a year - or at least once a week when spread out. That's damned good if you can forgive my language!

On top of that I can add that much of my fishing includes traveling, meaning that I fish not only my trusty home waters, but also more exotic locations. This year has brought me to Mexico, Spain, Sweden and Iceland - plus a week on our own little local "exotic" destination in the Baltic, Bornholm. That is without counting the 35-or-so local days I have logged in my fishing journal. Not that bad if you ask me...

OK, I know you guys are thinking "Yeah right, any bachelor without a regular job and family obligations living in cheap housing can do that! If I were a free man, I'd be fishing all the time too!".

Well, surprise! I'm not a bachelor, but a family man with wife, kids, house, car, cats, chickens and the works.
OK, I don't have a regular 9-5 job, but work as a consultant, which does give some liberty. But trust me, it's not always easy to fit in the fishing in such a job. Just ask GFF partner Steve Schweitzer who's a consultant too. Customers don't like you farting around like a housefly, but prefer that you can answer the phone - and preferably not while you are standing in waist deep water (which has happened really often in my case, actually...).

Well, you ask, how do I then get the ends to meet in my life?

I prioritize!

Family first! Friends second (most of them fishers, of course), fishing third, and somewhere in the spot between eight and twelve I fit in work.
Really!
Putting work low on my list of time consumers has been the most important thing I have done in my life.
I work from home = no commuting.
I'm my own boss = overtime when I want it, off days when I want'em.
I take just enough projects to keep things running economically = few work hours a day or few work days a week.
I earn what I need and little more = no high taxes, no "rich man's punishments" as we have them here in Denmark.

The quality of my life is a lot better than it was when I was a boss (editor-in-chief) for a big multinational publisher clocking 60-70 hours a week.
On the paper I had more money than now, but the fact is that I have more to spare now than ever before. Why? Because I can shop in the morning and buy cheap, cook all day, bake my own bread, cook my own soup. I spend less money on cabs, restaurants and such and we just adjusted our spending to the family's current lifestyle and to suit the situation.

And I haven't heard them complain about it. I'm home almost all the time I'm not fishing, and spend more time with my wife and kids than ever. My wife took up fishing and goes with me on many of my regular, local fishing trips. I'm a happier man, and probably a lot more fun to be around than when I was stressed by my job and frustrated about going fishing too little.

So it actually is possible to fit in more than two months of fishing in a year without turning into a divorced, homeless fishing bum.

I do it!

Lucky me!