FIRST FIG

Sunday mornings, usually after a from scratch breakfast of some sort and a coffee or two, finds my wife and I sitting across from each other at the kitchen table with our calendars open (hers in a spiral bound planner and mine on the iPhone) hashing through our schedules for the week, month and beyond.  We also use these mornings for going over plans for upcoming trips, sharing articles of note, finances (eyes roll back in my head) and really just taking an hour or so to wrap up one week and get on the same track for the week moving forward.  These Sunday morning sessions are one of several things that helps keep our (almost twenty year) marriage together.  

Depending on how many work or other obligations that are added to the calendar, this is usually when I consider (gently) bringing up "Oh, so-in-so is going to such-and-such place and asked if I'd like to go along...".   There is a time and place to bring these conversations up and usually Sunday morning after a big breakfast is that time.  Not always...but usually.  Recent discussions have centered the upcoming Colorado trip for IFTD (with some fishing added in), family camping trips in North Carolina this fall, a possible return to southern Belize in November and what hasn't been discussed yet is an invite to Louisiana at the end of the year or the start of next year.  Timing is everything...  

Our daughter, Hadley, overheard our conversation the other Sunday and said something about our family always having something going on and that it makes life pretty exciting.  Her comment, along with knowing everything on the books from now through December, sucked me back in some sort of time warp to being an awkward 5th grader in a classroom in Michigan where we read Edna St. Vincent Malay's "First Fig"...

My candle burns at both ends;

   It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—

   It gives a lovely light!

Just four short lines but I remember being really drawn to that poem as a child without really knowing why or what it meant.  In many ways it seems like I'm living those words now.  That "lovely light" is a family with a fourteen year old daughter and ten year old son going to different schools thirty minutes away from each other, extra curricular activities at school on weeknights and church activities on the weekends, my wife who is constantly bending her work schedule and quite honestly keeps all things together at home, school and beyond, my own career in law enforcement that, though I get a lot of professional satisfaction from, has a hectic schedule all it's own, our family's travels and then my own trips that I take with friends.  Then there are things like weekly chores and lawn work which I kind of despise but of course are necessary.  And through it all, developing content ideas for The Fiberglass Manifesto is always on my mind as well.

September means two things.  Another year older and another year that I've been writing The Fiberglass Manifesto.  I turned 45 the middle of this month and unbelievably this website is now 11 years old to include over 4,600 posts, over 6,000,000 page views, 40,000 or so social media followers and an ever widening circle of friends and experiences within fly fishing and the outdoors.  I am beyond fortunate.  

Here's to another year of this candle continuing to burn at both ends (without being snuffed out) and thank you for those of you who read this daily for following along.  I really do appreciate it.