For the Sake of the Skate
Skateboarding is an act of meditation. When I’m on the board, I can’t think about anything else. If I lose focus on skating, I could fall. After a surgery in 2021, skating was hard to do and hard to fit back into a routine. It felt hard to regain my routines pre-surgery. But it also felt like we had a lot of Big Life Events take off after the surgery, placing us in a lot of situations that snowballed into eating up all of our free time.
FINALLY, after a much longer time than I had ever imagined, Matt and I were able to get back on our skateboards recently. It was incredible.
The thing about skating is that it makes me want to do it more. I’m writing this right now, but I would prefer going out to skate. It feels all consuming. Maybe it’s because there’s something comforting about being on the board.
When I am out there with the board, I’m unable to be on my phone, and I’m not as readily available for other people. It’s a great way to unplug for a bit, but it’s also a great way to just be. When we go outside to skate, that’s the activity. That’s it. There is literally NOTHING else I have to be doing. I’m not skating to “get somewhere to do something else” or anything like that.
I am just out there, skating for the sake of skating.
Skate time is time to just exist, breathe, and feel okay. Even when I don’t feel okay.
When we went out to skate the other day, I was feeling weighed down with a lot of emotions, but while we were out there, it felt like all of that was placed on hold. None of it came to the board with me. Did it find me and crash back down on me when we were done skating? Not right away. The high from skating lasts for a little bit for me, but yes, of course, it crept back up on me. I’m still sad about Mother’s Day, irritable from lack of sleep, generally anxious and depressed about everything, but for a little while, I didn’t have to be those things.
I recently participated in a few social situations in person. I’ve seen a few more people lately than I have since the pandemic started. It was nice for my mental health for sure. But skating was like an oasis for my mental health. I love being active out in nature, but with the way Covid wrecked my ability to breathe in the tepid, Midwestern summer air, and being easily fatigued (again from Covid), it’s hard to get to enjoy the outdoors here. But skateboarding allows for that in some capacity, and I appreciate it a lot.
I really like the inner peace I feel when I’m on the board.
I want to identify the other activities I enjoy that make me feel this way and invest more time in them. I know one of those activities is literally any kind of physical activity/exercise (dance, yoga, weightlifting), so I’ll likely invest more time in doing that as well. And I know technically, skateboarding is a full body work out.
I’m also going to be mindful of activities that aren’t physical activities that make me feel as good as the physical activities do. I can’t always be active thanks to my stellar constitution, so I want to have activities for my general lifestyle as an indoor, cave dweller. I’m going to work to identify those for myself soon.