Monday, August 24, 2015

dropping glass balls

Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls—family, health, friends, integrity—are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.” -James Peterson

On some days, it feels like nothing is going right. I am dropping all the balls, even the glass ones. And it hurts. In some months, those days just keep on coming, back to back, until it is raining, pouring, glass balls dropping and shattering until I can't distinguish the individual crashes, and all it is is a roar, a sickening flood, and every night ends with the thought of, "I failed today".

Saturday, August 1, 2015

Surfing is a drug. Unlike snowboarding

With snowboarding, you are sliding downhill and it's guaranteed you'll get some speed (either through riding or tumbling). But you'll get down.

With surfing, that is not guaranteed. As a starting surfer, I have often been in the water for 2 hours and not caught a single wave. But when I know I'm about to catch a wave, there's a certain rush that happens. For me, the thing that keeps me coming back is not even riding the wave (probably because I haven't ridden many and don't know how good it can get yet). But the thing that keeps me coming back is the gush of dopamine I feel RIGHT before I get up on the wave. When I feel my board catch, and all my brain keeps firing off the question "IS THIS ONE MINE? THIS ONE IS MINE!!". The build-up and climax and rush of bliss felt at that moment is only comparable to.... an orgasm? (I wouldn't know cuz I've never experienced one. Lol jk.) But some moments that I've felt that, I didn't even catch it, because the split second after, I lost balance or misstepped and crashed and burned into the cold surface of the wave and was trashed and tumbled.

Ok, maybe it's similar to jumps in snowboarding. With jumps and tricks, snowboarding becomes a different beast. Because there is build-up. There is the approach to the jump and all the sound of the board sliding against the snow as you make minor adjustments and try not to shit your snowpants. There is the ramp up, which goes by in a flash, as you kind of stop thinking. There is the jump, and you become airborne and all the noise quiets down as if you've just entered the vacuum of space. And it has been bulding-up... to right about now. To right when you land, and you KNOW that you'll stick this one. And you stick it. Or you don't, and you fall hard, and really do shit your pants. (I have come close - to where it took all my strength to hold my sphincter.)