Be a fisherman

I haven’t written for a while, so have been searching for inspiration to help me out. I have been reading a book called your story, which talks and goes through the pitfalls of writing and offers some great advice about writing your own story. One of the questions are “why are you writing it?” goood question eh?

I want to be able to demonstrate how navigating this one life we get can be hard and very challenging. This book is as much about my learning, about me and what I have learned throughout my 48 years. I fundamentally believe that if we’re all honest with ourselves deep down we all are searching and want to know what the meaning of our lives are. For some the meaning of life might consist of chasing and achieving dreams, for others it might be being a doing for others but for me, its more about being happy in my own skin, learning to accept and come to terms with the fact that life can be pretty shit at times, and be ok with it? We all carry some sort of varying invisible pain, possessed by invisible demons, you know the ones? the dark shadows that follow us on our journey that can keep us awake at night? the ones that only you can see or feel.

So my story consist of five parts. 

The first part is my childhood, early childhood then the journey to adolescence, it is a journey that we all have to go through in order to get to adulthood, no one can skip that part! I want to explore the challenges I faced, dealt with, using my immature that only a child possesses, how hi saw life through my childlike eyes and how my relationship with dad and how he influenced my perception of the world.

The second is the transition from being a teenager and my transformation into a young adult being a grown up, (whatever the fuck that means) what that looked and felt like for me, a child having a child, becoming a parent, being a partner and trying to make sense of the on going, tomenting diagloge that would torture my mind “Is this it? is this my lot?”

The third part is about what I would describe as being my personal rebirth, overcoming a crisis in my life that could have quite frankly taken me down a completely different path, journey that I am on now and about the learning that took place, how I found the new adult version of me. 

The fourth part is about Dad coming back into my life, about how our relationship had changed because I had changed. The personal struggles and challenges of being metnally and demotionally swept back to a time in my life when I felt confused and vulnerable, a time where I felt I owed dad everything, but owed him nothing struggling to find the new version of me whilst trying my best to stay afloat and care for him at his time of need, when he’d never been there in mine. 

The fifth part is basically summarising all the lessons learned, my observations on not just me own life, but life in general, the coping strategies that I adopted, which acted as a lifejacket in my time of great need, it about the many people who threw me the lifejacket when I was at the verge of drowning. 

But ultimately the key message and Moral of the story is that we can all make mistakes, but we often only realise that we have made a mistake after the event. The decisions we make in our life are often based on our environment and how we think and feel at that particular moment in time and our thoughts, feelings and ultimately this dictates our actions and reactions. 

Throughout life, we gather so many untrue and limiting beliefs about ourselves, I would describe life as being like the trawler fisherman who goes out to sea, in search for rich pickings the prized cod, he prepares his net, then tosses it out to see and waits patiently before reeling in his catch. Now a good, moral fisherman will then sieve through his catch, in search for the prized cod and toss the unwanted fish back into the ocean, Its time consuming but it’s important after all his other catch serves no purpose, it has no financial value, and it may well serve someone else but not him. I am just a mear fisherman in search of my prized cod, trawling through all the limiting beliefs about myself and throwing them back into the ocean, let someone else have them! they don’t serve a purpose for me.

Like a  fisherman’s can never guarantee to catch his prized cod and neither can we, like us, like life, he has had to learn to navigate, search for the places where the desired cod hides, hiding amongst the shawls of other fish, he has to follow and track them down, take a risk that the place where he lowers his ankor that will be the spot where the cod is. Never knowing if this is going to be the BIG one the BIG catch?

He goes out all weathers facing elements that are out of his control, wind, rain or relentless waves, taking a risk with his life and fellow fisherman, but that doesn’t stop him fishing, they all know the risk involved, but in order to survive back on shore, they need that catch to take home, to survive, feed not only themselves but their loved ones too.

Apparently, a Fisherman’s job is one of the hardest jobs in the world, but so is ours, we should never underestimate our own journeys, underestimate our own strengths, but we should always be in search for our own prized cod, well that is if we want too? I want to and want to be my own fisherman, dictating my own journey, throwing my net out wide never knowing what the results are, but also knowing that whatever the catch I can save or disregard the parts that don’t serve me and throw them back into the ocean.

Right, I am back on track, for now anyway! I have a free weekend, our old man is away, I have the house and keyboard all to myself and I will be spending it fishing and if I find any cod, I might share some with you….

Love Fordy x