“Surf More”

A few evenings ago, in a strange yet increasingly regular nostalgic trance, I began flipping through my worn, black journal. This journal is filled with random ideas, poems, memories, drawings… basically a whole bunch of timestamps about absolutely nothing. But then (way deep in there) I stumbled upon a list of new year resolutions from back in the start 2019. Clearly I had trouble making up my mind, as the list was quite long. But one thing caught my attention in particular. Two words, a single bullet point: “Surf More.”

Why would I write something like this? I mean compared to the average person, I surfed a lot. Surfing was never really something I actively needed more of. If I felt the urge to surf, I’d go surf. If the waves got good, I’d put my homework down and get to the beach. It was natural in the way that eating is natural. Not that I needed surfing to survive, but more like when you get hungry, you eat. When you’ve got the itch to get in the ocean, you go surf. So why put this down as a resolution?

Looking back to this time in my life, it was quite obvious that I was living with great amounts of fear.

My entire young life is inseparable from surfing. My best memories, my best friends, my family, my home. Not to mention that my entire life so far was my young life (obvious but worth noting). So as a soon-to-be college graduate with my first full-time job looming on the horizon like a set, I became increasingly afraid that I might be growing out of my childhood self. And thus, all the joyous activities (cough cough surfing) that were tied so closely to it. It’s scary to accept change when such a core sense of self is linked so tightly to the past.  

A year and a half later, and I’m surfing more than ever. Is it because I wrote it down in my journal at the start of 2019? Is it because young life and adult life might not be as separate as I feared? Is it because surfing transcends age and time in ways that other activities don’t? I think that there is truth in answering yes to all of those questions.

By acknowledging this fear, head on, and by making a literal note of it, I was able to develop the mindset of actively doing what makes me happy. I understand that I probably need to qualify this a bit. Surfing is an obsession, yes. But the actual physical activity is a bit harder to nail down. Weeks can go by without a good run of swell, out-of-water responsibilities can start to pile up, and the urge to surf can be contained by keeping the mind occupied with surf edits, vlogs, and magazines. Next thing you know, two months have gone by and your salty board is gathering dust and your wetsuit is covered in bird poop from hanging so long from the balcony. By promising myself to surf more, I turned a switch from obsession to necessity. From hobby, to habit. 

As I mentioned earlier, the transition from college to working life was daunting. The structure, the classmates, the cell-phone bill paid by my parents, these were all things that would be left behind as I stepped into the uncertainty of life financed on my own. But besides the obvious, there was no way to predict what would be gained and what would be lost. I remained confident that things would never really be the same. 

 And things were different, primarily with regard to my newfound responsibilities. But I kept waiting for some big switch, some sign to commemorate adulthood. And it never really came. My passions, my joys, the ocean, surfing. It stuck tight. 

I remember sitting out in the water on chilly Ocean Beach Saturday morning. The late-fall offshore wind howled off the backs of hollow, head-high set. The tide was rising, turning the closeouts into A-frames, slowly. Why does my life have to be divided into two completely separate parts? Can childhood and adulthood be as fluid as a rising and falling tide? Surfing is a gentle, yet important reminder to take moments and waves as they come. And while the tide and shape of waves change, these moments don’t really.

This leads into my last thought, kind of beautifully. The timelessness of wave riding is as addicting as the physical action itself. The escape that the ocean provides is constantly welcoming. Throughout the entirety of my life surfing has been a place of safety when things got scary outside of the water.

This transition is still scary. Surfing weekly, sometimes daily, not only takes me back to times where my world felt slightly more simple, it also reminds me of a future that’s exciting, complex, and hopeful. It’s a meditative gate to a hundred different lifetimes within your own, where memories act as reminders that things might just be alright after all. To be able to associate the coping of both pleasant and unpleasant emotions with a single act is one of the most useful tools I have. It’s a way to emotionally move forward and backward through time in ways that promote both growth and recovery.

So yeah, I’ve been surfing more than ever. And this is due to a variety of reasons. But at the end of the day, I’m doing it because I need to. I’m doing it to maintain structure. I’m doing it to stay healthy. To stay young and old at the same time. My 2019-self would be proud when I say that no matter how often we get out there in the water, we can always “surf more!”