Surfing can’t fix shit

This is another one of those pieces I wish I wasn’t writing—or perhaps I’m just wishing my reason for writing it were different. Yet, here goes. Can surfing fix stuff? Spoiler: surfing can’t fix shit.

Not time to read? There’s a micro-pod for that.

It’s been a really tough week. I’d already experienced five pretty nightmarish days before the weekend hit, because The Wipeout Weekly website went down. I spent three full days dealing with the repercussions and fixage. Three days I could’ve spent writing. I now know more about DNS, hosting, and memory throttling than I care to.

And then…

The shooting at Brown. The attack on Bondi Beach. Rob and Michelle Reiner dying. And the sitting US President’s indefeasible reaction to the latter. Pit of Despair Central.

Even if these events didn’t touch you directly, I’m sure you’re familiar with the feeling of complete and utter overwhelm. Now imagine feeling it, at different intensity levels, for more than a week.

Not a pretty sight, I tell you.

Except…for the first time in my life, I said screw it and went out surfing every day it got too much. I must be growing as a person, because this is not something that would’ve happened even a couple of months ago. I would’ve stayed at home and either worked on solving a problem until I went certifiably insane, or buried myself in news and social media coverage to the point of absolute exhaustion.

But no. I went out surfing.

And for those one to two hours in the water, the world didn’t exist. No computer, no phone, no social media—no thoughts that didn’t concern my position on the wave. Will it or won’t it break over my head? Can I go now, since no one else got in? Surfing problems, not world problems.

Did I feel any better after the session? Perhaps—initially. But surfing didn’t fix anything. For a brief moment, it contained the feeling of utter despair, giving me some breathing space. It was a cheat, a temporary relief. You could call it regulated avoidance.

And maybe that’s the point. Surfing doesn’t resolve grief, despair, or anger. It doesn’t suddenly make you see sense. What it does is narrow our focus to something our nervous system can actually handle. You can only take one wave at a time.

At the end of the day, surfing didn’t make the week any better—but it made it survivable.

Author: The Wipeout Weekly team