Hitting the Wall

It was a rainy day and Trinity and I watched 180 Degrees South. A really good documentary that just brought home how stuck I've been feeling the last week.

Here's how it goes  - Life is going along and I get an idea. It's a good idea and it excites me.

Life gets really good.

Having such a good life gives me more ideas, excites and inspires me, and I start doing more stuff.

But maybe I don't have enough room in my life for more good stuff, just enough room for a little good stuff and the rest of the room is for the kind of draggy everyday stuff I was trying to escape in the first place.

But I'm really inspired now and I just want to do this great stuff I've started - in this case, the surfing and the book featuring other moms doing sports. But there's still all the old stuff to do: breakfast, lunch, dinner, dishes, laundry, potty training, homeschooling, trips to the park, and the stuff I really hate - trying to get my kids to do things they don't want to do.

So here's the $64,000 question: how to do the stuff that excites and energizes me while still having all that stuff taken care of, but not having to do it myself?

THIS IS THE QUESTION! Isn't it?

Fit to Surf

I've been on a crazy Amazon book ordering binge and this one came this week. I LOVE it.

In addition to surfing, my usual workout is an almost daily 20 minute yoga session from yogadownload.com, but I've been feeling like there've been gaps in my fitness and conditioning.
I just started doing this book's flexibility and strength training program this week, but I already feel some new muscles a-hurting: particularly the glutes and hamstrings, which I've known were weak.

To fully get the benefits of Rocky's program, I'll either need to join a gym or buy some equipment so I think I've got at least a pull-up bar and some free weights in my near future.

Also, my dream for this year is to get back on my bike so that I don't have to get all blue when it's been raining and I have to avoid the water. There's a women's bike club/team in Culver City that just started and I think it's calling my name.

Today's recipe for a perfect life: someone else looks after kids 30% of the time, cycling, surfing and having fun working on my book: interviewing mom-athletes all over the country.

And lots of good sex with my hubby.

Another Mom on Board

Here's to all the moms who make it out of the house to do the things they love - at least once in a while.

This is my friend Madhavi waxing up a friend's board this morning before we went out for our first ever surf session together. Sad to say, the conditions were, well, sad - windy, blown out and shallow due to a particularly low tide.

While the waves didn't offer much in terms of actual surfing, we were able to catch up and chat. And it didn't hurt to have someone watch my technique and remind me, yet again, to get those knees up. Just when I'd thought the problem was weak hamstrings, now I'm thinking weak upper body. Either way, practice, practice, practice...

Coffee. Croissants. Waves.

Lately I'd been having the problem of being too "in my head" while surfing.  For surfing, as for any sport, this is a kiss of death. I had no such problem today. The weather was sunny and warm, I was caffeinated, well-fed and happy.  People were swimming without wetsuits and I was reminded  that, Toto, we're NOT in Chicago anymore.  Or New York. Or  Utah. I was reminded how much I love Southern California.

As  for the waves. There were some of the fastest, strongest, waves I've ever felt. One knocked me so hard off my board I fell headfirst into an underwater somersault. When I emerged into the air I shouted  exuberantly: "THAT WAS AWESOME!"

Today's lesson: even though I was having the "greatest time ever" I kept wanting to check my watch.

Today's theory: when I'm about to have a breakthrough in something and my identity is threatened - the identity that likes to prove how lame I am, how I can't do anything right, and that nothing I do ever pays off - I get obsessed with time. It's the perfect way to get out of the transcendent moment and into my head.

Today's breakthrough: I resisted checking my watch and kept re-committing to having fun, being with the waves and letting the ocean be my teacher.

Not a bad way to spend a Sunday morning.

Just. Be quiet. And I'll stay in bed.

 
So far, I've discerned that mastering my surfing is largely a matter of mastering my parenting: which is to say, my life in general.  Surfing well and often, in this case, demands I overcome a combination of weak boundaries with the kids and a degree of tending to my own well-being that is not as strong as it could be. 

For instance...

Like many human beings, I like to stay in bed until the last possible moment. Given the right motivation, however, I am capable of early-rising. I’ve worked on enough film shoots to know that, after maybe thirty minutes, getting up at four or five can seem enough like having gotten up at eight or nine - especially after some breakfast and a nice espresso. So one of my goals as a newbie surfer has been to get up for that early morning “dawn patrol” surf session before the kids get up and Brian goes to work.

There’s only one problem... 

While I spent the summer attempting to wean Ashton and train him to sleep in his own bed,  I stopped at the insistence of my frustrated and sleep-deprived husband. Consequently, Ashton still sleeps with me and, as soon as I get out of bed, follows me wherever I go - shrieking and demanding milk and more cuddles. Demanding ME. 

He’s the opposite of an alarm clock. He’s like a siren demanding I stay in bed - a siren I am rarely able to resist. Sometimes I do get up to do early morning yoga but, nine times out of ten, he comes into the living room and climbs on my down-dogging legs. 

This is a challenge I believe few non-mom yogis, and few non-mom surfers, share. Challenges like these are the secret tests of motherhood that most women probably don't expect before they go ahead and have kids. I surely didn't.

It. Working.

Sometimes it all comes together. The childcare. The weather. The tide. The gear. Today was one of those days.

Some new homeschool friends invited us for a play date at Santa Monica's Muscle Beach and I brought my board - just in case there'd be enough moms to look after the rascally Davis children while I caught some waves.  There were only our two families, but the mom (named Haven, just like Brian's grandfather) generously offered to look after them while I went out.

The sun was blinding, the water relatively warm. The waves, small and strong at first, got bigger and more predictable while I was there. And there was only one other surfer. I basically got hammered, but I had fun. And after I remembered some of what I've learned in the last few months, I got hammered less badly.

So much went through my mind while I was out in the water. How I've learned from surfing to look straight ahead of me instead of down all the time. How many people have guiltily shared their fears of waves and water since I started telling people I surf. How pulling my wetsuit down over my booties is preferable to pulling the tops of my booties up over my wetsuit.

And how maybe things aren't as bad, hard, tough, and painful as I've always thought they had to be. Especially now with my new super-duper short haircut that I absolutely love.

Beached

Today I considered, for the first time, that perhaps this recurrent cycle of colds and minor winter illnesses is to be embraced rather than fought. Perhaps the universe is telling me to slow down, take it easy, chill out a bit. Maybe it's telling me to consider how far I've come, rather than dwell on how much further I want to go.

And the universe may have something there...

It's been more than six months since I got this idea to start surfing, longer still since I started dreaming of it at night. In addition to the time I've spent in the water, since then I've read numerous surfing books, watched countless videos and browsed a seemingly endless number of surf-related websites. I've bought gear. I've taped postcards of surfers to the wall above my desk and daydreamed about surfing breaks all over the world map hanging on the same wall.

But aside from the busy work,  actually surfing has led me to discover that while I've spent my life drawn to hard work, concentration and struggle - my pursuit of waves represents the first time I've been drawn to something simply for the joy of it. And I shed some bitter tears recognizing how much it's cost me to pursue suffering over happiness.

But there's always another day - to make new choices, to choose life-giving vitality over doom and gloom.

What I've learned so far is that learning to surf hasn't been about the surfing at all. It's been about my life  and the difference it can make to commit to something - not as compensation for a deprived childhood, not to prove anything to anyone else, not to win status or success, not to become a "better" person - but just because I want to and it brings me joy.