June Gloom Funk

As I begin this blog post, I am reminded that once again I have awoke with no real desire to surf when I know I should be surfing given my current mental state. It's been a hard couple of months for me, though nothing that I cannot handle myself given time and distance from the event that generated this ongoing pathetic up and down struggle within myself.

The event, like a badly written soap, began with a surge of enthusiastic wonder and glee, having supplanted and removed a long entrenched mood of self denial and pessimistic reality.

She entered my life on a whim and quickly overwhelmed me with her cheerful prescience and low-maintenance attitude, not to mention her beautiful smile and soul searching eyes. I was sold on her promises and began to lower the wall of isolation that had engulfed my being for so long.

Fast forward, 6 months later...it is done, defeated, denied and dead. Not by my hand, but by hers. No face to face goodbyes, simply the digital dead letter email that left me hallow and empty. Since then, I have tried to regain some form of composure, some kind of fire to keep me moving forward in my life. 6 months on from the break-up and I have a great job, a great place in which I live and plenty of surf to keep me busy, yet I'm alone and unmotivated...though I have tried to keep myself moving forward.

Surfing plays a big part of keeping me sane, but when the mind is full of numbness, emptied of any connection other than the ongoing mental games of "What if..." and "Why", surfing becomes secondary...a process that I cannot seem get myself motivated to pursue more often.

The worst part of this miserable process is the waiting...cause it's really all that I have now. As it is written; Time heals all wounds.

I can only hope that with the healing, comes a desire to re-engage myself with something that has always been there for me...Mother Ocean. It takes a lot of personal drive and perseverance to surf up in NORCAL, especially when you do it all by yourself, which was not always the case.

I waited a full year to return to my home break, having self exiled myself to Alaska over a year ago. When I returned, I found that my primary surf buddy had decided to forgo surfing for being a Referee for the local Roller Derby. My back-up surfing buddy has always had the innate inability to get up before 9 am, which rules out a lot of dawn patrol sessions, which is when I usually go. Finally, there is the boss, but like my latest session, he tends to flake when he has too much work.

Now, I'm not worried about surfing by my lonesome because I have done it enough in the past that I'm used to it. However, having that extra push of a surf buddy, knowing that you will either be picking them up or meeting them at the spot, can really help in motivating me to make the extra effort to forgo my own mental games and just fucking get my butt in the water...which usually helps at lightening my mood.

Yet, I really have not had that since the event, which is the reason for my lame "Surf Session" tally. Though, I do not deserve any condolences or thoughts of sentiment direct my way because as I reflect on my last surf session, I realize that I have an attitude problem that becomes too elevated while within the liquid playground.

Yes, I'm a solitary soul surfer who does not attempt to socialize with others (only those that I recognize or engage me first) while in the water. Yet, I've been too distant and angry of late, having acted selfishly and too aggro when it was unnecessary and unwarranted, especially for up here. My only excuse; my own self loathing for allowing myself to fall for something and someone in whom was never really real or ready for the kind of commitment that I was seeking and needed.

As twisted as the human mind can get, I have allowed my inner mindset to overflow outwardly, disturbing my outer reality to the point of disrupting an activity that I cherish as a means of escaping the chaos of my land-based life. This is not good and needs to be addressed and recognized as simply something that only time can heal, and that my time in the Mother Ocean is better utilized to forget and forgive, myself and others.

I have been following a fellow surfer/blogger who is on a great surfing adventure in Bali, who has had to reassess his own surfing abilities, and to some extent, his own life and the possibilities that it can bring to him, both within the water and out. I have expressed to him some core beliefs that are shared between myself and other surfing buddies of his, yet I still find myself incapable of getting these beliefs to set within myself. I feel numb and alone, and the thought of surfing in the same capacity does not sit well with me, thus I forgo the much needed contact with something that IS transformitive and inspiring because it challenges our true sense of self, refocusing our inner dynamic towards what matters most: live within the moment, not for what was or for what will be.

Yet, being the emotionally organized, what if personality that has been blamed for "thinking too much", I tend to forget my own philosophy, allowing myself to accept and remain within a state that is more self directed than it needs to be. Moreover, I have failed to translate what I believe into an actual life manifesto that helps me to move forward from this dullness.

Though I revel in the loneliness of being a NORCAL surfer, and do not envy the crowded chaotic conditions of my fellow SOCAL surfers, I do miss having a crew to hang with, not unlike Mr. Duckbutter and his fellow El Porto stoke force.

I think that at times when the mind tries to sink our stoke in the day to day life struggles of being human, having a bunch of surf mates, encouraging and motivating us into getting our lame-asses back into the stoke-zone, can be very helpful even for us lonely surf types.

Anyways, just wanted to get this down...written and digitally disbursed. I'm not perfect and never will be. My goal is trying to find BALANCE within my inner world and within my outer as well. As I move forward in life, I know the stoke will always be there...Mother Ocean will always be there, ready to bestow lessons of life upon my weary soul.