What Picking Up a Skateboard at 24 Has Taught Me
Have you ever wanted to try a hobby but didn’t because you felt like it wasn’t worth it? My first skateboard broke in half when I was 9 and I never picked up the hobby again until this year. I didn’t think skateboarding would benefit me at this point in my life, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Here are 3 lessons I learned since I’ve started skating again.
You’re never too old to have fun.
One of the things that kept me from skateboarding was the belief that I was too old for it. One day, my girlfriend suggested we both get boards and I saw that as the green light to rekindle my bond with this hobby. I bought a beautiful cruiser board named Sharla, a name I just now made up while writing this sentence. Once the bottom of my feet touched the surface of the board and I experienced how fun it was, I never looked back, and the more skaters I came across, the more I realized that skating doesn’t age-discriminate. Young or old, If you have two legs, have been thinking about skateboarding and were looking for a sign to start, let this story be your sign. There are one-legged skaters out there too, so there’s really no excuse. For fun’s sake, just hop on! Being an adult can be hard sometimes but I see skateboarding as a remedy to that, it takes the mind off things. I find it similar to meditation or even sex as it keeps me fully invested in the present moment.
You’ll bust your ass and will keep busting your ass but it’s worth it.
Learning to ride a skateboard can be challenging. It will test your bravery, patience, and motor skills, but it gets easier the more you hop on and eventually becomes second nature to you; you’re sturdier, you know how to shift your weight, go down hills, turn tight corners, binge watch skateboard trick tutorials on YouTube, practice them, next thing you know you’re popping ollies over shopping carts at a Walmart parking lot. You go from being awkward on your board to being one with the board. No matter how good you get though, the falling never stops. Falling is important because it’s the teacher, it makes you recognize what’s not working and what needs to improve. Just like the board, we sometimes lose control of life and fall off, but the key is getting back on, setting an intention to improve and keep rolling without fear. I used to hate falling and I’ve gotten some gnarly bruises from them, but I now wear these scars as trophies. Just like the ponytail length of a Dothraki warrior symbolizes his strength, so does my skate scars symbolize my fearlessness of failing.
Having a hobby feels/is good.
Have you ever been asked what you do for fun and realized you don’t really be doing stuff? Now, anytime I’m having small talk and people ask me that question, I’m able to say “Oh, I skateboard.” And that‘s dope as fuck to me. Just last week I was at a mattress store and one of the salesmen asked me that, I told him I skate and he shared that he himself was a skater, 6 years in the game. We had a nice chat about how challenging learning tricks can be but how exhilarating it is to ace them. A new hobby will introduce you to a world of new people and possibilities, you may even get so good at it that you start making money from it. Along with skateboarding being a stress reliever, it’s a great way to get your heart pumping and shed some fat. If you were to skate every day and eat a balanced diet, you‘d be burning pounds without even noticing. You’ll look in the mirror one day and be like, “Damn! When did all this slimness get here?” All because you picked up a skateboard.
These are the 3 biggest lessons I’ve earned from skateboarding. It’s a fun and exhilarating sport for anyone at any age, and if you’ve been thinking about picking up a board yourself, I hope this story inspires you to hop on and unleash your inner skater.
