Balance Sheet

I felt tempted to fish bass today in the rain, but stuck to catching up on things, writing an article on fishing the Florida Keys the biggest task. It's written for people on a budget, and its genius is my wife, Patricia's. She hatched the idea of vacationing in the Keys independently, researched the possibility, and came up with a plan we could afford. We went twice. The second venture involved 10 or 11 days. Those were the Glory Days. 2007 and 2012, when I worked for a credit union. In my current job, I can't hope for as much vacation time as 2012 required, not for a long time perhaps. I've worked there almost a year, and I don't yet know what hopes for more vacation than a week out of a year I might eventually have. I haven't felt incentive to look into the issue.

Having planned on fishing Lake Hopatcong again today, I anticipated my friend's desire to fish a sunny day, suggesting we try in late September. I wouldn't have thought of this without the rain. So the big springtime thrust of fishing experiences comes to a close, yesterday a success especially because it proved not to be too much. Now I know I can fish weekends, even though I have to report to my job both Saturday and Sunday all summer, but I won't overdo this, as there's too much I have to get done.

Often when I focus on tasks here at home, a mood comes over me as a reminder that it's less what anyone does that matters, and more who he or she is in this world. The essence of my contemplating the circular aspect of Lake Hopatcong Sunday, related in the post I finished very early yesterday morning. To confuse particular achievements as who you really are, as if the value responses they confer--even if only your own--add up to your own value, is to forget reality no one can create, and which, in terms of achievement, only demands of anyone that he or she be aware and embrace what is sensed. An affirmation which discloses the self as much as it reveals the world, obviously because both are inextricable.

I remember a book from the 70's. Think the 70's, not 60's. Culture of Narcissism. And look at America today. Or the global culture. At least in the 70's people admitted this disorder.

Often I write an article, feel proud of it. In fact, it's well done. I have skill with words I've achieved. And then, it all disintegrates in my mind; comes to me like this: a farce. Right words, right order--doesn't matter. Because taken as a whole, any article I write is a particular assertion and so undercut as false by this deeper reality that doesn't need any sort of explication.

So what is the issue here? Words. And sense. Both are facts. It's not as if the verbal mind hasn't--in fact--needs. As my words come undone, the problem might not be any inherent falsehood regarding their assertion, but a lack of balance in my life in need of sense to compensate for struggles to achieve. I work to make money. Both as a writer and a supermarket worker. My family needs income. But I do this in a larger societal context, and I also do this in a larger biographical context. I'm well aware it seems as if I attempted too much as a young man, so I can find some agreement with the conservative line that we get what we deserve in life.

It's easy to see that agreement, but the struggle itself is a wrestling match with the Devil. Just what is it that I have got and deserve? This is the question that value judgment common among conservatives never ventures to answer. I haven't answered this question myself, either. I try. I doubt a conservative mind would have this courage.

This I know. There is rationality and a real world. Even a little of this in that supermarket where I work. What I earn is up to me. Correct? Obviously, I need to get ahead. And then I can rebalance with sense, as I put it.

So the years ahead, these will be interesting in this respect, to see what becomes of me. But it never will be about me, as much as about this world of reason and sense I touched upon. On Lake Hopatcong with my son Sunday morning.