Milking it

Consistency -

Knowing yourself.

Maximizing the time that you have.

Not feeling sorry for yourself.

Transcending perception and interpreting the flow around you -

Pretty heavy stuff huh?

Well - if there's one thing that I have found out it is that I am consistent in the way I apply myself. If I get interested in something, I dive head first into it and won't come up for air until I have absorbed everything I can about it. This blog itself and the patterns I've established should be proof of that - surfing, kiting, studying nature, shaping boards, catching fish, sailing - all of them thoroughly studied and valued for the sense of finding something deeper in all of them...

The "zen" of extracting the energy in a wave with a surfboard. You can find that clarity of thought in anything you do - you just have to know to look for it.

Today I turned down my normal pattern of picking up a spinning rod and pitching a lure. Instead I used the fly gear and waited. Waited for the fish to swim around me. Presented the fly and waited for a reaction. Set the hook and wrestled the fish to the beach. Calmly unhooked it and watched as it swam back to the sea. Time slowed down again as it does while surfing a wave or jumping with a kite overhead. The sense of focus heightened in the seconds between the bonefish turning for the stripped fly and when I felt the hook take hold. That sense of appreciating the moment - it is where you look for it. There was a time I thought it could only be found on a 6 foot Hawaiian barrel. Ten years later, I have learned it is in front of you, you just have to grab it.

Halfway through my current tour, away from my family, halfway across the planet on the eve of 2012, I find myself milking the universe for the stoke that fuels my fire. I will leave this place within six months and am likely to never return. I will get to go home to my family. I will flyfish for bonefish in other parts of the world and teach my kids to do the same. In the way I left the surf of Hawaii and found other ways to focus, I'll adapt. But I will always remember the time between casting flies to and landing these bonefish.

And while I'm still here - I'm going to milk this dry!!!!

Happy New Year!!! May your 2012 be fruitful and productive! Stay consistent and appreciate the world around you! Find the good in the situation you find yourself in and make the most of what precious time you have!

MILK IT!!!