The Storm Outside You.

It's not just you. Everybody's down bad.

My 10-year-old son came home from beach camp this week and sighed, “Dad, I can’t surf.”

This isn’t true. I taught him how to surf myself. I’ve pushed him into the bubbly filth of Venice Beach and watched him glide across the foam like a paper plane. I’ve seen him catch waist-high waves at Ho’okipa in Maui. He’s no Kelly Slater, but he knows how to pop-up on his rasta-colored Wavestorm and shimmy his way to the whitewash. It’s really cute when he whips around to throw a shaka with a toothy grin.

“I know you can surf,” I say. I don’t want to discredit him, but I want to offer another explanation. “Could it be that the conditions were a bit rough?”

“Yeah. The waves were really big today,” he admits. “They kept crashing on me. And there were people everywhere - I didn’t want to hit them.”

“That makes sense. It’s the summer and the swell is hitting the beach directly, instead of at an angle. That makes it tough to ride.”

With my hands, I show him how the ocean was churned and spun thousands of miles away by powerful thunderstorms. Depending on the winds and the ocean temperatures, those waves traveled many days and nights to arrive at our beaches. But if they’re angled perpendicular to the coast, the surf impacts the sand head-on and “closes out,” meaning there’s no open face for your board to sweep up and down like a knife spreading butter on toast. No matter how skilled of a surfer you are, there’s not much you can do under those circumstances.

Since I’ve been back from summer travels, I’ve had some time to catch up with old friends. I started noticing a pattern, sitting across from fashion designers over lunch, hanging on a FaceTime with a tech founder, or drinking with a college grad cousin at a family reunion. At some point in the conversation, the tone would drop an octave. Inevitably, we’d discuss work, or lack thereof. Perhaps you’re in this camp as well - transitioning between careers, reflecting on your purpose in the world, while the pressure of bills close in around you. This shouldn’t come as news to anyone, but things are getting kinda weird out there in the real world. The halcyon days of pandemic stimulus money, crypto booms, and WFH are shrinking in the rear-view mirror. In the hot, hot heat of Summer 2023, we’re still not in a recession, but we’re definitely feeling the pinch. I’m getting a little squirmy, how about you?

On Wednesday, the NY Times’ Daily podcast declared that The Great Resignation is Over, noting how people aren’t trigger-happy to dump their jobs anymore. If anything, they’re banging on the inn door. I’ve had artist friends living the freelance/freebird dream tell me they’re now hunting for a secure, corporate gig. Starry-eyed founders who followed their passions are now second-guessing their fiery spirit, wondering if their alarming YOY numbers will ever make an about-face. I have my hands in multiple industries: apparel, crypto, art, Hollywood, food… and each of them are suffering from an identity crisis as their floors drops out. What’s interesting to me is that each sector is convinced that the apocalypse is isolated to them - and furthermore, every individual believes the storm cloud sits above their head alone. Social media paints a pretty picture where your friends are dancing in their apartments and traveling gaily on a European odyssey. Behind the scene, everybody’s wrestling with the same existential questions.

Nike’s ailing, NFTs are down (but not out), some of your favorite fast-food restaurants may be closing, TV and film are at a standstill due to the WGA/SAG strikes (making a bad situation worse), and even Supreme is on hard times. AI is stealing white collar jobs over blue. Even social media influencers are treading water. These days, you’re probably working twice as hard for half the money and 100% of the disillusionment. But there’s nothing wrong with you, necessarily. You’re still a good surfer even though the conditions aren’t cooperating.

Zoom out and you’ll realize that the shitty surf isn’t about your lack of physicality or surfboard design and are instead inspired by events far beyond your control. In the sneaker market, there’s general fatigue around vulturish reselling, over a decade of hyped-up releases, and redundant design with low innovation. You can be the biggest technical performance brand in the world, but what if people would rather play video games in Crocs? Or big red boots?

China and India will account for half of global growth in 2023, but China’s post-COVID recovery is not going as hoped. In an interconnected world, China’s slowing economy sandbags all of us - whether we work in imports/exports, bartend, or put boards together at a skate shop. And yet, many of you may still blame yourself for not getting a callback after a strong interview, feeling aimless in your career, or struggling over why you’re not further along in life. Outside of your bubble, there’s a vaster bubble. It’s an ecosystem, it’s the planet and its inhabitants. And everybody’s going through it. We just easily forget that we’re in it together.

I took my son back to the beach this afternoon. We dragged his foam-board with the bright pink fin down to Dockweiler Beach and he immediately balked at the ugly waves: fat grey slabs that rolled in like cinder-blocks. The wind had picked up and broke apart the smooth, peeling ocean skin into a crumbly mess.

“See? I can’t surf this!” He cried as wave after wave pounded him like a Whac-A-Mole mallet.

“You can’t surf THIS. You’re right!,” I shouted back as the sea filled in around us. “Notice how you didn’t say that you can’t surf. You said that you can’t surf THIS.” That extra word made all the difference.

Soon, he understood it for what it was. Just a terrible, fucked-up, stupid wave. Yes, he knew how to surf, but this wasn’t his best surf. The best kind of surf is a composite of countless factors that exist beyond our bodies and will. The amount of people in the water make all the difference, as do the tides, the location of the beach breaks, and where the sun and moon sit in the sky. He couldn’t surf this wave, neither could I or anybody else for that matter. So, we ditched the board and body-surfed instead, surrendering our trunks and limbs to the tumult and acid reflux of an incontinent ocean. The more the waves barked, the more we laughed, swallowing its salty water, tumbling in its angry guts. We even bonked our heads a couple times. And we went with it and we did it together.