Last Wednesday, I went sea fishing with a group of people to celebrate a friends Birthday. It’s not something I do on a regular basis, in fact, probably twice in 12 years, but it was a fantastic day out. We all met at 0945, a very social time of the day, and boarded a boat with our captain, Bruce and his assistant Sam. After the safety briefing we all settled down and set off to our first spot to catch some fish!
It was a glorious day with the sun shining and a welcome sea breeze to cool us down now and then. We began fishing for mackerel to use as bait for the other, bigger, fish later in the day and it wasn’t long before Bruce found the perfect spot. The fish were coming in faster than we could manage and all you could hear were shouts of excitement and panic at the same time.
We had lunch, the first beers were already open, and the conversations were interspersed with tales and stories of past experiences. We laughed, had controversial debates, we caught fish and we finished off the trip by swimming near Sandbanks beach. Sandra (My wife) picked us all up from Poole harbour and we went back to my friends house, where the fish were gutted, washed, cooked on the BBQ to create a beautiful evening meal. It was a perfect end to an amazing day.
The reality was, though, I’d said yes to this trip a while ago and as it got closer I was starting to wish I hadn’t. Work was building up and I was expecting some important emails, which were time critical, on that day. It would have been easy to cancel but I am so glad I didn’t. The ‘time critical’ emails apparently were not that critical (and didn’t appear) and all of the other work related ‘stuff’ was still there the next day, so, I would have missed out on such a great experience for no reason.
This is one of those times I was glad I closed the laptop, switched off from work and had some fun with a great group of people. A memory forever! I can imagine people looking at the sign on my office door, which read “Gone Fishing” thinking I was joking!
When was the last time you “Went Fishing” when you physically or mentally left it all behind and just had a great day out? I don’t do it often enough and recognise I need to do more of it. Our family holiday to Turkey has now been cancelled, which is a good thing as the kids could no longer get the time off work, so would have had to be, expensively, adjusted.
I am looking at planning something different with some mates, for a short break. It would be easy to not bother but I am making plans so I can’t back out and sit behind my computer, pretending that I have time critical things to deal with.
The only ‘time critical’ thing I have to do is enjoy life and that’s the plan.