June 11, 2025

Look 115: On the blog again

Fellow angler,

Much to your chagrin, I have returned. The calls for new posts were simply too great to ignore. I was overwhelmed just like Harry getting all his Hogwarts letters.

Hmmm my first GIF back is from Harry Potter. Does that feel right to you? It’s not bad. You probably understood the reference. Maybe that’s the problem. It’s so simple. So mainstream. Is this what I’ve become? Did you sign up to have a normie occupy your inbox? No. Something more obscure would suit me better. A reference that only a handful of my readers will get but that all of my readers can agree was useful only as a way to break up the text.

Like the time Rocko mails a love letter but decides he wants it back and gets swept into the mail sorting machine at the post office.

As you can see, I’m still getting back into the rhythm of this whole writing thing. Taking a month away does that to a man.

A tangential Derek fact for you: I’m not good at understanding words when people sing. (Some people refer to these words as lyrics.) I don’t know why I am this way and I don’t think anyone has named this particular disorder yet, though I hear DSM-6 is in the works and my fingers are crossed it will shed light on a few of the things that are wrong with me.

Well because of my unnamed disorder, which reddit leads me to believe is not all that uncommon among simple folk such as myself, when I was a child I thought Rocko’s Modern Life was called Rocko’s Mother’s Life. I had only heard the title in the theme song and I don’t know how good my reading comprehension was back then (though based on how bad it is now, I believe it was quite poor).

Anyway, that’s the whole story. I just needed to get a few self-deprecating jokes in to feel like myself again. Somewhat of a diversion to make you forget how long it’s been since I sent one of these. Like Dale throwing his pocket sand before running away.

Now let’s move on to some of the questions you may be asking.

What is going on here?

Nothing out of the ordinary. Normal blog stuff.

Where the hell have you been?

Fair question. I didn’t plan to take a month off but I was feeling burned out and needed time to focus on doing life tasks and recuperating.

The apps tell me that my most listened-to artists in May were Willie Nelson and The Grateful Dead. That’s the norm for me. I also discovered and listened to a fair amount of David Grisman with and without his quintet. I finished five books (multiple about the ‘86 Mets), I walked an average of six miles per day, and I watched eight movies. So all told I think things weren’t that bad.

Isn’t today Wednesday?

Yes, as that great Vine said, it is Wednesday my dudes. This newsletter-blog-thing is officially moving from Tuesday to Wednesday releases. I don’t know if any of you actually track such things but we live in a society of made-up rules and I will do my part by sticking to the rules I’ve already made up.

You see, I did plan to send something multiple times in the past month. Each time I failed it became clearer that I regularly do other things on Monday and writing a blog post on Monday night is just too much. But Tuesday nights are a dream. So I’m moving to Wednesday publication and I’ll never miss another post date.

Title song

This is a short, light post to get us all back on the blog again. So what’s more fitting than On the Road Again, a classic song by my main squeeze, Willie Nelson?

Plus do you realize that in the short lifetime of this blog, I’ve mentioned Willie 12 times and have yet to use one of his songs for my titles?¹

As Willie says: The life I love is making music with my friends, and I can’t wait to get on the [blog] again.

Until next time,

Happy fishing!