A short little essay about fishing that I wrote one night while I couldn't sleep: https://dame.art/feed/you-cant-carry-any-more-fish

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You can't carry any more fish

I run back and forth between the Draynor Village fishing spot and the Gielnor Bank adjacent to it, filling up my bag with fish and my skill book with experience points. To what end do I do this?

The fishing is automatic, unless of course the pre-defined square where fish congregate shifts slightly in which case I have to make several clicks to adjust for direction. Eventually, after a few minutes of this, a user interface pops up with a simple message: "You can't carry any more fish."

My inventory is full, practically overflowing at the thought of the 26 fish that my character manages to stuff inside its bag. It would be 28, but two spots are occupied by the fishing rod and stack of 1,359 pieces of bait that I have left. Presumably I could catch another 1,359 fish if I just spent enough time here.

Gielnor is a country I visited and spent much time in from the ages of 9-16. I fished many fish. I cut many trees. I smithed many iron bars. Eventually I had enough to buy some dragon armor and other goods to showcase to strangers passing by me. These items were, in a way, a display of how many fish I had caught over time.

I left Gielnor for a little over a decade until I found myself traveling back there recently out of nostalgia. Even at the moment I'm writing this, I have a portal to Gielnor open next to me, fish accumulating in my inventory.

And there it goes again...

"You can't carry any more fish."

"Tap to continue"

I tap to continue.

At this point I've amassed 850 raw herring and 816 little green sardines. My fishing level is 53. I need another 8,822 experience points until the next level. Why am I trying to fish and collect more fishing points? I honestly don't know. It's fun sometimes. It can be satisfying and comforting. It even distracts the mind.

If I think about it too much though, it starts to feel like a metaphor for life and then stress starts to creep in again. Which isn't pleasant because I came to fish in Draynor Village hoping it would take my mind off things.

Did I mention it's 3:46am? I've taken to waking up in the middle of the night to do things because my body is the most at ease at night. My anxiety levels are the lowest, sometimes to the point of being non-existent. It feels like magic, that my body can have a weird little schedule to it...

I suppose it's not that weird though. Even in Gielnor there's a schedule, a cadence, a pattern to things.

At some point you can't carry any more fish and you have to either drop them all on the ground or take them to the bank.

• Dame