Rick, I'm not sure if this might relate to that but it does remind me of a story my Grandma Ella tells at gatherings. Also it's a little long, but I think worth the read.

When my grandma Ella was a little girl, her mother was preparing the holiday roast for the family.  She told Ella it was time she learned to make this for someday her mother might not be able to. She took out the roasting pan put a piece of parchment paper in it and then a little water, she tenderized the roast, buttered it and put on some herbs from the garden. She then tied it up and cut about an inch of each end. Ella looked puzzled, she asked her mother "why do you cut some of the good roast off each end before putting it in the pan, surely the pan is big enough for the whole thing?" Well her mother bent over and whispered "that is always how my mother did it, so there has to be a good reason."
So Ella being the inquisitive little girl went to her grandmother and asked "Grandmother, why did you always cut a little off each end of the roast when you prepared it?" Her grandmother leaned over and smiled and said "That's how you great-grandmother always prepared it." Well Ella was getting no where so she went off to find her oldest living relative, her great-grandmother Crisstella. Well found here where she always was at gatherings, sitting over by the fireplace with her kitty in her lap. Ella went up quietly and tapped her great-grandmother on her arm. Her eyes opened and smiled at Ella. Ella got up in her lap with the kitty and asked her "Great-grandmother, my mother was showing me how to prepare the holiday roast and I couldn't figure out why she cut the ends off, so I have been going around and all of them say that's how you did it." Great-grandmother Crisstella chuckled a little and gave Ella a big warm kiss on her cheek and leaned in and whispered "Ella I did that because the roast that I bought from the butcher was too big for my pan, that's all."
Often in my life I hear someone say "That's how we've always done it." and I smile and think of my Grandmother Ella and her story.

The fisherman saying why would I do that might realize things like commercial licences, insurance costs, fuel for the boat, and the fact what was fun is now a job. And also reality kicks in (at least here where I am), the seasons are too short to be profitable.

Jerry great story. That fits right in with my Because It Says So log entry. :)

Jeffrey yeah, I hear ya. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a professional baseball player. Loved playing baseball. But as I got older, and I started playing men's softball, I got to a point where I was playing on so many teams that I was on the field 6 or 7 nights a week. It got to the point where I really started to feel like it was work. I'd be relaxing in the pool on a nice summer day (you know, the 3 we'd get every year in Buffalo) and I'd be like, "damn, I have to get ready to go play ball." So I understand how that can happen to any profession.

I retired 3 weeks ago, and your story reminded me of a conversation I had with a mentor in my trade 50 years ago. I was an eighteen-year-old just finding my way in a small factory. Punching 7 to 5 every day and a few hours every Saturday in an oil-laced atmosphere as a byproduct of the air coolant from machines cutting metal. When my mentor visited a small farm in Costa Rica he bought when he was in the service, he would always hear folks in town telling him how they couldn’t understand how backwards the native folks living there were. They were bare foot, woke up and fished and picked berries and such and worked together in their community. No need to punch a clock, no taxes, no lawn to mow, always enjoying the sunshine and fresh air. The punchline was the folks would tell him the native folks were the ones screwed up, then go back to the stress and anxiety of a modern life, punching their time clocks. After the story he and I went back to work.

I think the moral of the story is to be careful what you wish for. Take computers, for example. When I was a kid, I was enamored with them. I loved everything about them. I loved programming, I loved being able to make this device do anything I wanted with just a couple of lines of code. I loved playing computer games.

But as I got older, it became work - working on them, fixing other people's problems, spending all my time in front of a screen. It got to the point where I'd come home from work and my son (who was in his early teens at this point) would want to play some computer games with me, and I'd feel bad telling him no. "Son, I just spent all day looking at computer screens; that's the last thing I want to do when I come home is look at a computer screen." So it took a lot of effort to try to balance that out in my life.

Flash forward now, and I love what I do, so I look forward to doing this every day. But I also make sure that I maintain balance. I try to quit work at a decent time, go enjoy some sun and pool with the dogs and the wife, and then I'm looking forward to it the next day. If you spend 30 hours a day in the computer chair, even I tend to burn out. And there are some people that thrive off of that - the rat race, 9-to-5, punching a time clock, making money, making money. That kind of stuff. I think the older I get, the less I care about stuff like that. The more I just value my time... the one commodity we can't buy more of. Well, I guess if you invest in yourself (health, diet, etc.) you can kinda buy more.

30 hours a day?

Kevin these hours are Florida hours. They don't calculate them like the rest of us do. lol

Kevin Uphill both ways.

Bill in the snow...

A day on Bajor + 4 extra hours to spend in the temple...

Richard six feet of it.   In Florida!