A reader explains the difference between a "surfer" and "someone who surfs…"
“One of the great things I love about being in the water with the tribe that’s out there is that we leave our egos on the beach, you leave everything on the shore, because it’s there when you get back. The ocean is a great equaliser. I think it’s made me a better executive of the organisation. It’s made me a better family man at home. Since I’ve discovered paddling my life’s never been fuller. My life’s in balance now. Live. Your. Passion.”
Such are the ruminations of the incoming media and content director for the WSL, Erik Logan. But compare his words to your experience with surfing, and what it means to you. Because if you’re anything like me, a lifelong surfer mired in mediocrity, surfing is, mostly, negative.
Wasted time, money and resources.
That’s the difference between a surfer, and somebody who surfs. Somebody who surfs uses the sport as a bow in their quiver of a well-balanced life. A surfer will eschew any semblance of balance in the chase of an unattainable goal.
It’s lies to yourself. You’re still a good person for following this selfish pursuit, you say. You’re doing it because it makes you a better person in the long run. At least you’re not a roaring alcoholic or a 72-hour-week career hedonist.
But you know it’s not true.
All it does is hold a mirror back up to your own selfishness.
We lord it over others when we’re in the lineup. Surfing is all about ego. Exaggerated avatars are activated as soon as we slide on a leash. Mild-mannered paper pushers on land are transformed into roaring balls of testosterone in the water. Spindly-limbed junkies run their dowried lineups like mad dictators. Retirees on surf mats will straight up try and drown a woman all because of a tribal breach.
It’s smoking snow cones with a methamphetamine-riddled local named Rocket at three am on a Thursday morning so that he’ll let you sit on surge with him on the next big south swell, while you’re wife and newborn child lie alone at home wondering when they’re ever going to see Daddy again.
Being a surfer is to fall into the abyss of solipsism.
It’s smoking snow cones with a methamphetamine-riddled local named Rocket at three am on a Thursday morning so that he’ll let you sit on surge with him on the next big south swell, while your wife and newborn child lie alone at home wondering when they’re ever going to see Daddy again.
Give it anything less than that and you’re just another blow-in. A dilettante.
That’s the difference between a surfer and somebody who surfs. A surfer will tear down everything they love for a Sisyphean pursuit.
It’s what the WSL needs to realise they have inherited.
And it’s what we need to accept.
But hey, maybe we’ve got it wrong. Maybe we need to be more like Loges?
Live.Your.Passion. Here.
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What a load of immature self centered drivel!
Weirdly, I feel better about myself when I’m surfing every day and surfing well. But I feel better about surfing and my life as a whole if I put surfing aside for a bit to do other things.
Chapters in life.
Points on a spectrum.
The ebb and flow of responsibility.
Labels vs situational perception.
Maybe spending 50% of the time I’m supposed be working checking the surf forecast and constantly re-planning the week around surf logistics? Very little capacity left in the brain after that for anything work-related. And watching surf web clips; trawling endlessly through BG comments (eventually posting a comment of my own). And then missing the dawnie because I was up too late catching up on work because I was too busy during working hours checking the surf forecast / reading BG comments. And taking that out on work (which has now become freelance because how can anyone hold down a real job and still get any surf time in???) by spending even more time checking surf forecasts instead of doing actual work. At least surfing makes it all seem like it’s going to be ok (it isn’t. I’m long past salvaging anything resembling being able to do actual work for money)
snort* it out
I’m not sure what I am. I did go surfing this morning in dog shit conditions mauled by a howling onshore. Still got a couple that were fun. And it looks I’ll go surfing tomorrow and the day after that and highly likely next week and it will probably be not great, but fun. I don’t think surfing needs to mean anything more than being a very very fun thing to do in the ocean that has no real meaning but is personally gratifying. And you can make some great friends who’re equally obsessive about having fun in beautiful locations with no real meaning. And you can also chat about arcane minutia to strangers on the internet.
Well none of that is me. Surfing has been real good to me. I have a ton of friends as a result of it, many of whom I’ve known for over 40 years. I feel at home here in Oz pretty much anywhere I go along the coast because of it, I also feel at home in Tahiti, Hawaii, some bits of California, and connected to a few other places too. I’m still in the same board riding club of which I was a founding member and I still love surfing my home break. I’ve seen more people rescued by surfing than I’ve seen destroyed by it, by a long shot.
I’ve had a few advantages in all that and I wonder if high on the list has been being born in Australia, where surf communities tend to form easily, thus often there are people around to pick you up when you fall.
But your in the industry my brother. I am not calling you out, you have street cred in what you do. The industry has presented you with opportunity to create a life, a balanced life that is centered around your job. Good on you. For most of us, we are see folks utilizing something we love as a hobby that helps them get through their tiresome life or their dreamy life and they bastardize it with their karma, yoga, hipster or egotistical look at me lenses and blow horns. Ultimately guys that cheat their way to the top of the point can go fuck themselves with their stand up canoes and brooms. Kook balls ELO should go ride the peak less ridden and he can write a book about the solitude.
I reckon if ELO keeps going with it, he’ll end up grumpy at some point. But by then he won’t be at WSL so it’ll be too late.
yes as the bar starts to close down he will move back to his hobby.. maybe in Venice adjacent?
As with any opinion offered on the internet this was about 10% truth 90% hyperbole. Surfing has been oh so good to me and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But I did just recently bring a junior surfads into the world and it’s made me realise how selfish I am when it comes to surfing in general. Old mate Loges just crystallised a few things for me.
You’re also in a unique position and have been able to build a life around surfing. Spare a though for us 7.5hr a day government workers scraping by on six figure salaries and five surfs a week.
Yeah the arrival of offspring does wake you up to that shit. all the best with it surfads! think of it like surfing will help make you a better parent.
I’ve seen you in person a few times, met you on an interview panel at the Boardroom show in SD, and never have I seen you wearing shoes. Fuck surfing, that’s probably your secret right there.
Nick- mucho respect to you but this is where guys inside the industry tent infuriate those of us outside of it.
For us plebs who don’t work in surf; surfads have nailed our experience but all we ever hear from surf business is how wrong we are.
Well I’m not saying that A-rock, I ain’t going all Ziffy on you, nobody’s wrong here, I was just recounting my own experience. In a slightly clumsy and broad brush sorta way.
I do reckon ol’ Erik wants to be a little bit cautious about that whole Live.Your.Passion horseshit though. “Passion” has a Latin root, it means “to suffer”. As we would all know, when you get all the way into something, someone’s gonna suffer.
My high school principal called my a “surfie” once during an assembly. I gave him a little tap on the shoulder and made him correct it swiftly to “Surfer”. Damned if I’ll ever be anything else.
Educate the Pedagogues ! Well done Dooma ! How did the tyrant take it ?
Quite well.
This Erik guy reminds me of one of those fake martial artists. The holier than thou, faux enlightened, I know more than you do, son of a bitches. You found an outlet and just like the rest of us, you needed it.. coulda just as easily been aerobics.
Don’t get all evangelical.
Just shut up and surf m@therfucker.
Or get up super early for jogging and shitting in driveways predawn. That activity would suit this Oprah Corp dropout / new WSL hire to a T.
Can’t wait ’til he shits in the Beachgrit office stairwell.
I prefer the old hot foot . Wrap the Pooh in newspaper , light it , knock on the door and then run like the wind .
Great idea, after performing the Hot Foot though, this guy will probs knock on the door or ring the doorbell then jump on his skatey with a long stick in hand so he can push himself along SUP style like the wind.
It’s called a ‘Kahuna Big Stick’ and that shit’s irie, brah.
No! He will get excited and start Hot Footing all his neighbours.
I quit my job, smoked some vape pens and moved to a beach town to be a local ledge…..is it too late for a 30yr old washed up yuppie to make his name in the surf world?
that is the root of the question, what is the “surf world”? is there any world at all?
ha
“I’ve got solipsism, but I brought lemonade!”
R.I.P Rocket. Love ya mate.
Eternally backdooring his battered and brown 6’7 x 17 1/2 through the nine circles of hell
Solid write up surfads.
TLDR: if you learnt to surf as an adult you aren’t a surfer.
I learned to root as a child and apparently I’m still shithouse.
mate, jerking off in the bath tub doesn’t count.
Fuck I’m still a virgin then.
Eh. The 58 year old guy pushing a mop around the lodge isn’t the only “real snowboarder” in the building, just the dumbest.
Did you ever read Romain Gary’s “ Adieu Gary Cooper “ or Ski Bum as it was titled in the English translation ? Boys just didn’t want to come down from the mountain .