The Key Clacks – health scares and unemployment in 2025

The key clacks and the screen glows with the same list of jobs that were there yesterday, and the day before. “Entry-level” positions that want ten years of experience. “Urgent hire” that never emails you back. It’s been a month of this, a month of feeling like you’re shouting into a void. The savings account dwindles, and a quiet, static dread starts to hum under the surface of everything.

So you walk away from the screen. The cure, or at least the anesthetic, is in the garage. Asphalt therapy. Twisting the throttle, the engine’s growl is the only voice that makes sense, drowning out the buzz of self-doubt. The roads around Fergus Falls blur into a watercolor of turning leaves, the gold and rust of late September. You’re not going anywhere, not really. You’re just outrunning the stillness, scouting the edges of lakes you’ve known your whole life, looking for drop-offs and weed lines from the seat of a motorcycle. It feels like doing something. It’s almost enough.

But the real quiet is out on the water.

You back the old Starcraft down the ramp, the one you spent a year restoring. Every patch on the aluminum, every coat of paint, every wire you ran to the little two-stroke—it’s a testament to a time when your effort produced a tangible result. It floats, it runs. It works. Unlike you.

The hum of the outboard is a low thrum as you cut across the lake. You kill the engine in a cove where the trees hang low, their branches just starting to go bare. And in the silence that rushes in, the real monster surfaces. Not the musky you dream of, but the one that lives in your phone.

The phone call. The words your dad said, trying to sound steady. “The doctors found something.” A scare, they call it. A polite word for a black hole that opens up in the middle of your life. A word for waiting. For scans, for biopsies, for the next call that will split your world into a new ‘before’ and ‘after’. You’re unemployed and adrift, and the one man who has always been your anchor, your absolute north, is facing his own storm. The helplessness of it is a physical weight, heavier than any anchor.

You pick up the rod, your hands moving on autopilot. The muscle memory of a thousand casts. The lure flies out, a silver flash against the grey sky, and lands with a soft plip. The retrieve begins. It’s a rhythm, a meditation. A prayer without words. For a job. For your dad. For a single, solitary bite that can pull you out of your own head for just one second.

For an hour, nothing. Just the silence, the dread, and the rhythmic cranking of the reel. You feel the depression settling in again, a cold, damp blanket. You think about packing it in. What’s the point?

And then, the line goes tight.

Not a nibble, but a violent, electric jolt that shoots up the rod and into your bones. The drag screams. It’s not a panfish. It’s something with weight, with fury. For the next few minutes, nothing else exists. There is no job hunt, no hospital waiting room, no dwindling bank account. There is only the bend in the rod, the tension in the line, and the raw, thrashing power of a big northern pike on the other end. It’s a battle of wills, a brief, violent connection to something wild and utterly alive.

You work it to the side of the boat, a long, lean torpedo of muscle and teeth. You net it, water and slime splashing over the gunwale. Bringing it aboard, you look at it. The ancient, spotted pattern. The cold, predatory eyes. This creature doesn’t worry about tomorrow. It is a perfect engine of survival, and for a moment, you held onto its power.

You gently work the hook free from its jaw and slide the big fish back into the water. With a powerful kick of its tail, it vanishes into the dark, leaving only ripples.

The sun is low now, painting the clouds in bruised shades of orange and purple. The problems are all still waiting for you on shore. The boat ramp leads back to the same reality. But something in you has shifted. The heavy blanket feels a little lighter. The helplessness hasn’t vanished, but it’s joined by the memory of the fight.

You can’t fix your dad’s health. You can’t force an employer to call you back. But you can restore a boat. You can read a lake. You can fight a fish and let it go. You can endure.

You start the engine. The sound is small against the vast quiet of the lake, but it’s there. It’s the sound of going on. The fight isn’t over. Not on the water, and not on land. But for the first time in a month, it feels like you’re holding the rod right. And tomorrow, you’ll cast again.