No Surfing after 17 years. What do I miss?

For the last seventeen years, surfing has been played a role in every major decision I've made. I never consciously referred to it as life priority, but somehow it was always there. It influenced where I lived, the jobs I took, the trips I planned, and even the people I surrounded myself with.

Somewhere in my twenties, I drank the Kool-Aid. I fell into the cult, performed its rituals, gathered with its followers, changed my habits, quit jobs, ended up in remote places, and even changed homes.

Surfing stopped being something I did. It became the lens through which I looked at my life.

Looking back, it's funny to realize how many small decisions slowly reshaped my world, all for one simple reason: “to surf a little bit more”. Throughout those years, it felt like a quiet voice was constantly whispering in the back of my mind: "If this happens, how much will you be able to surf?" The answer to that question usually became the answer to the decision.

People who study addiction often say that the behavior itself isn't the real problem. It's usually a response to something deeper. If you want to understand the behavior, you first have to understand its root cause.

I feel like passions works in much the same way. The jobs, the travel, the homes, the friendships, they were behaviors that responded to something that happened years earlier. Somewhere along the way, surfing made me feel something I had never experienced before, and I spent the next seventeen years chasing that feeling as often as I could.

 Six months ago that pursuit disappeared, not because I stopped loving surfing, but because I had no option.

 The first three months after surgery brought my life to a complete stop. Physical activity felt so distant that it barely crossed my mind. Simply becoming healthy again was the only priority.

 The following three months became about rebuilding a normal life, Living alone again, driving, going to the grocery store, returning to work. One by one, those pieces slowly came back, and I found myself grateful for every milestone, in a journey that began without knowing what my future would look like.

Now I've reached that strange stage of recovery where your mind is ready to go, but your body isn’t. The pain keeps fading, life looks normal from the outside, but something still feels unbalanced.

 For years I lived by a simple rhythm: work hard, play hard. I loved having those two sides of my life in balance. Work enough to build the life I wanted, then go into the ocean as much as I could.

 Now the work hard is still there. The play hard isn't.

 As these weeks have passed, I keep returning to the same question. What is it that I actually miss? The answers go beyond just moving my body

I miss leaving my thoughts in the water. In those moment you're so occupied trying to understand what the wave is about to do and at the same time telling your body how to respond that your mind has no room for anything else.For someone like me, someone who can carry thoughts around for hours or days, that kind of silence and presence is comforting.

No meetings, no unfinished conversations, goals or plans. All my attention drawn the water moving in-front of me.

I miss letting go of the idea of control. In a world where our lives revolve around creating certainty. Building routines, calendars, systems, businesses, and plans become the day to day. In surfing trying to be much in control will play against you. We preprare, we gain skills and our intuition gets better, but what actually happens every time you go in the water is beyond your control, a mystical element comes into play.   You'll often hear things like, "All the waves are coming to you today," or, "You're sticking every turn." What makes those days different from the rest is hard to comprehend. Once you’re tuned in you know its not just you the one acting at that moment, you’re all also on the recieving end of something greater.

I miss the connections that come with just being there. The pink and gold sunsets that make you feel closer to the universe.The casual conversations between sets that bond you to others.Your body and mind syncing together for those few fleeting seconds. The connection to nature, the connection to other people, the connection to your own body, all condensed into a few hours in the water.

It feels strange to describe surfing as merely a physical activity when the physical aspect sits surprisingly low on the list of reasons I keep returning to it.

The hardest realization over these past six months is that I didn't just lose the ability to surf. I temporarily lost a version of myself. The version that checked forecasts with anticipation, that planned days around tides and swell direction, that measured satisfaction in hours spent in the water.

Recovery isn't only about rebuilding your muscles. It's about rediscovering who you are while the version of yourself you've known for years is temporarily out of reach.

To say I miss surfing isn't to say life hasn't been good without it.

In many ways, these months have been a gift. Not having the option to rely on surfing has forced me to discover other parts of myself that I probably never would have explored otherwise. It has given me time to slow down, to reflect, and to appreciate things I used to overlook.

I wouldn't trade those lessons.

It's been six months.

It still feels like a long way back, but it also feels like I'm halfway there.