On simultaneously rejecting and accepting myself
I bumped into an acquaintance I hadn’t seen in a while the other night; I asked if they had been skating a lot lately. She replied, “...no...just so busy…” or, as I call it these days, the standard adult reply. We had a great conversation that allowed me to reflect on my relationship with skating. My response was along the lines of “that’s cool; sometimes time away from the things we love is good, it helps us appreciate it more, blah blah blah.” Then I said something I’ve been feeling a lot but hadn’t shared out loud with anyone else: I’ve stopped claiming my skating of 1986-1992-ish and think of myself as starting to skate in 2017. That run of skating set the hook of lifelong love in me and I have paid at least some attention to skating all along: watch the x games? Sure! Peruse a copy of Thrasher/Transworld/etc. at the newsstand? Yep. Replace skateboarding with a severe mountain biking addiction because it was ‘like skating, but for adults’? You know it, bub. As we were chatting, I s...