Self Awareness

I watch a lot of outdoor shows.

I always have.

My earliest recollection is sitting on the davenport on a Saturday morning watching Championship Fishing with Virgil Ward with my uncle Dean. For all the younger readers, a davenport is what you would call a sofa or a couch. 

Anyway, that leads me to today’s topic of conversation. I was watching a Saturday outdoor program, Larry Smith Outdoors, and he was hunting ducks in Alaska.

If you haven’t watched Larry Smith before, he is a guide/tv show host that’s based in Wisconsin. I watch him most weekends, but this episode was of particular interest to me because he was going to Alaska. 

In the introduction, Larry started to talk about the guides they hired for the hunt. What he said surprised me. Usually, one guide speaking about another guide involves a lot of platitudes. It’s a mutual respect for another person making a living in the same industry. 

Not this time.

Larry said, “the minute we got to St Paul (Island), and got to talk to the guides, I knew that it wasn’t going to be, as far as the guiding part, wasn’t going to be what I expected. I don’t know what was going on with these guides, it was bad vibes as soon as we got there. I don’t know if these guides were burnt out or what the situation was…”

After hearing about Larry’s experience, I’ve taken time to reflect on how I interact with guests. It doesn’t matter if I’m tired, or if the fishing was poor the trip before, I need to remember that this is a special day and people choose to spend it with me on the river. They don’t need to hear about my problems. My attention needs to be on why people are here and hopefully that involves fun and catching a lot of fish.  

The fun part I can control, the fish, not so much.