While the sun might feel like it’s setting, a surf trip can make it rise again. Photo: Haro
Life can be hard at times. Getting older means that responsibilities change. The pressure to be a functioning member of society, be successful, make money, and generally not be a bum living in the sand with your daily schedule dictated by the waves can be immense. Time speeds by at an ever-increasing rate, old friends slowly disappearing from your life — not because you want them to, but because everyone is fucking busy — and suddenly, before you know it, the annual surf trip is not annual anymore. It’s just something you might do in the future if you can find the time. But here’s a tip: make the time. Make the time right now because we only have a little bit of it and the sand runs faster when the neck of the hourglass narrows.
My partner and I have a baby on the way. It was a long process, hindered by age, excess, ovarian reserves, etc. IVF is not an easy process, but it worked, thank God. Add that to the fact that we bought a tear-down house, have been up to our neck in renovations for three years, and are both holding down full-time jobs, and lemme tell ya, surfing, once the thing that ran my life, has fallen to the wayside.
Some of my best friends, the ones I’ve spent so much time getting violently ill from empanadas that came out of a hot trunk with, the ones I’ve spent so much time laughing in the lineup with, the ones I’ve spent so much time playing cards with under a flashlight with in front of a Mexican beach fire as the moon makes its way across the inky black sky, those friends have asked and asked again if I was going to join them on their trips. Short ones, long ones, and two-week ones. Time, as it is wont to do, got the best of me. They went, I didn’t.
“Next time,” I always told myself. But aging is weird. There’s always something you need to do; something that feels more important. But that surf trip? That’s important too. It’s not selfish, I promise. I mean, it is selfish, but it’s also a great way of ensuring you’re not a miserable blob who is simply existing for the sake of doing the things you should be doing, like being a functioning member of society, being successful, or making money.
For the last two years or so, I’ve been “buckling down” and trying to get my life in order. It was already in some kind of order, but not the order I felt it should be in. I felt I’d been too focused on fun. Too focused on ensuring I did as many fun things as possible. And I was, I think, but I swung a little too hard the other way. I also deal with depression — not crippling, but it’s there in the background all the time, telling me I’m stupid and useless and that I should just lie down because there’s no real point to any of this anyway and lying down is easier than doing things that are, in the grand scheme of life and everything else, completely pointless — and boy oh boy, did it feast on my emotions when I stopped trying to have fun all the time. It told me that fun is hard. It said that friends are hard. It shouted that life is hard and doing anything to make it easier is a sisyphean endeavor. Along with all the pressures of life, depression slowly began sowing its seeds of chaos and seeping into… well, everything. My relationship suffered. Insomnia, something that I’ve struggled with as well for much of my life, took a serious hold. I just wanted to be asleep or drunk, and sleep was only an option if I was falling asleep drunk. And that’s not real sleep.
Everything slid downhill. I stopped working out. Stopped surfing. Stopped reading. Stopped even attempting to better myself, mentally or physically. I don’t want to say that I gave up completely, but I certainly did give up on making my life good. Busyness was the excuse to not do anything fun, but I never seemed to get anything done that was supposed to be making me so busy. My partner finally had enough. She had been gently pushing for me to find something to feed whatever I was hungering for, and basically forced me to go on a surf trip. What a wonderful partner, right? I, of course, said no at first. “The dogs need me,” I told her. “You need me. The house needs me.” But I am not, in fact, so important that I can’t leave for a week or two with a bit of planning. And so I went.
I recently got back from a dusty little town in mainland Mexico. It was only for a week. Incredibly out of shape, I half hoped to arrive to meager conditions. Alas, I did not. It was well overhead, a reeling lefthand river-mouth point break that rivaled some of the best waves I’ve seen in person. My shoulders and back and neck didn’t work. My body wouldn’t do what I knew it could do. I surfed incredibly badly. But oh my God, was it ever necessary.
Just one week. That’s all it takes. A week-long surf trip with sun and waves and cards and dice and sand and good friends and early-to-beds and early mornings. A week of exercise and, dare I say, doing things solely because they are fun instead of because they “need” to be done. And now I’m home, back on rainy Vancouver Island, where the sun sets at 4:30 p.m. and rises at 8:00 a.m. in the winter, and the water is freezing and the waves are fickle. And you know what? I’m better than I was. I don’t dread waking up in the morning. I feel at least slightly inspired. I want to make my life better, not just go through the motions so it looks as though I want to. Sure, I know that I could slide back into the couch with a belly full of weed gummies and bourbon, but that doesn’t sound very appealing. Maybe on Fridays (I’m not a teetotaling monster), but not to squash the bad stuff down this time. All because I put everything to the side and went surfing with old friends for a week.
You might not need to hear any of this. If I was smarter, I would have listened to the countless people who spout off (much like I’m doing right now) about the importance of balance in life. You might be one of those smarter people, but if you’re not, listen to me: if your life feels like it’s unravelling, the strings that tie it all together tangled hopelessly in a giant knot, step away from trying to untie the knot for a while. Take a breath and go on a surf trip with your friends if you can. Go surfing solo. Just take that surf trip, because sometimes, you need to stop trying to untie the knot and come back to it without cramped fingers, with fresh eyes, and with water dripping out of your sinuses.
