the Practical Skateboarder

A friend of mine recently described a realization he had about skateboarding. The feeling he gets from learning a new trick or landing a difficult one is probably the same one that Tony Hawk experienced when he landed the first 900 (while admitting that his trick was by no measure equal in difficulty or significance as the 900).

His point was this–there’s a feeling of relief and elation that’s difficult to put into words that one can only experience when doing something difficult over and over again, and then succeeding at it.

Yeah, landing tricks is fun. It’s fun the same way that playing a card game with friends can be fun or enjoying a sunny day at the beach can be fun. And while I don’t mean to diminish the rejuvenating spirit that comes with these fun experiences, they do not equal the feeling of reward, satisfaction, and joy that comes from something earned.

Landing the trick is merely one part of skateboarding–in my opinion, not the most important part, even though it’s the most visible to everyone else.

Rather, the most important part of skateboarding is everything that happens before you land the trick–the process of putting in the work to earn it. And, for me, that’s the fun part. It has to be, otherwise I couldn’t get better. Otherwise, I don’t think I’d be able to sustain almost 20 years of skateboarding with the same passion and interest as I did when I first started.

To do something for that long, and to maintain an intense interest in it, requires that hard and fun blend together. In the long run, it was fun because it was hard.