It’s rare, but every once in a while, I’ll tie on a fly, make my first cast, and catch a fish right away. Those are the perfect days—everything aligns. The fly’s the right size and color for the conditions, the cast feels effortless, the presentation is on point, and the fish is ready to eat. That’s the “happy path” on the process map.

But more often than not, things don’t go quite that smoothly. Sometimes you’re doing everything right—perfect casts, great technique—but nothing’s biting. You’re casting the same fly, in the same spot, to the same fish, over and over, and getting the same empty result.

Once the NFL season kicks off, the next thing on my calendar is a long-standing tradition: a weekend in Las Vegas with the same group of friends I’ve been meeting up with for more than twenty years.

Each fall, we gather to relax, play a couple rounds of golf, enjoy a few great meals, and spend hours laughing, catching up, and watching college and NFL football. There’s a little gaming too, of course, but the real purpose of the trip is connection and rejuvenation—the kind that doesn’t happen during the other fifty-one weeks of the year.

Have you ever really needed that lob wedge in your golf bag? I mean really needed it—like there was no other way to make the shot, and your score depended on holing out? Maybe that moment has come for you. If so, you were glad you carried that club around for the 764 holes where you never once thought about using it.

Some dates are communal anchors. September 11th is one of those days for many of us.

When I split the bamboo for my first handmade fly rod, I had this naive idea that the hard part would be the big gestures like splitting the cane in a way that would leave enough material to make all the pieces. Once I got through that step, the repetitive steps of planing and sanding were going to be my undoing—progress is slow, but one wrong movement and the whole thing gets scrapped. Almost fifty hours later I had learned that the craft lives in ability to get lost in the process and take each step for what it is — the small, exact actions that add up to making something amazing.