Saturday's Surf Sesh. Two words: AARon BrrrRRRR.

Newsflash: It wasn’t even that cold!

I met Maddie and her buddy Lou at LS at 9:30am yesterday. Absolutely NO wind and sun was shining. Temps read 20 something Fahrenheit and I’m not sure if it was the standing around a bit, the wet Wet Sox I’d put on at home or the fact that Google had lodged a nut in my head in the morning: The weather is 11 degrees but it feels like 2. Have nice day! that set me shivering early on.

I hadn’t been out in a couple weeks and so the already brutal paddle out felt heavier, and I felt slower. The currents were incredibly strong and sometimes I was paddling sideways. I did everything I could to avoid turtle rolling but that’s always a fools errand and lasted about five minutes. There was SO much water. We’d gotten a storm early this week and I think it just pushed a ton into the ocean.

After twenty minutes or so, I finally got through to the other side, not before I realized I’d been pulled a quarter mile down, toward Restaurants. Shit, I thought.

I made my way back to Maddie. The waves were big with surprisingly little push, meaning you had to commit to sitting right under the lip essentially to nab one. I was having trouble hanging with this and the waves were breaking inconsistently, and also often double waves, which was even more confusing.

Not going to lie.

It was a frustrating session for me.

I hate admitting that. I try to make surfing a place in my life that has no pressure to perform, to be anything other than what it is, but I really wanted to snag some waves yesterday and it just wasn’t my day. I was dropping too fast down the face when I caught them, I was NOT catching them because I was resisting how far in I had to be and then two hours in I was slipping from cold feet and just face planting right into the water.

It’s true that I was out with buds, the sun was shining, we were bobbing in the ocean. Overall, we were winning.

But I walked back out onto the shore thinking: I can’t go this long without being in the water again.

I thought about it as I drove home in my wetsuit (changing was not happening) and as I stood in the hot water of the shower and I recommitted to surfing. It quite literally is one of the sources of my power in my life and I need to be tapped in to it more. It’s my church.

YEW for silver linings.

Why I Self Published my Book Be Surf: A Surfer's Brief Manual for Living

We all entered contests when we were kids, I think, at least most of us. Inherent in those contests and competitions was the process of being judged, being evaluated. We often got numerical scores which told us if we did well or not, and even if we felt we had done very well FOR US, some old guy with gray hair who’d been judging gymnastics since the era of Nadia Comaneci, could tell us we did very poorly indeed.

But when it comes to my writing, I don’t want someone else to decide if I get to release my words into the world, and how. I don’t want to hold my breath and wait for the score.

There were many reasons why self publishing (aka independent publishing) was the path I chose when I released my book Be Surf and why it’s the path I plan to continue down for my future projects.

The primary one I’ve already alluded to: I’ve got things to say, and I don’t want someone else to determine if/when/how I have the right to say them. I have very little tolerance for feeling controlled or subdued in any way. I would have broken out of the barn every night if born a horse, and the idea of a committee judging my work and potentially blocking my path is anathema. It doesn’t work for me. It works lovely for so many others—thank God as it’s the main way I’ve encountered so many of the books I love—but it does not work for me.

Alongside that, I am an extremely impatient wild boar when it comes to doing something I want to do. With self publishing, if I wanted to release a book tomorrow (or like 72 hours), I could. The fact that with Be Surf there was nothing in my way for that, save a few formalities as I went through the uploading process, was amazing. And let’s be real—when it comes to our dreams (and writing has always been my dream), the fewer things cluttering our path and giving us a reason to make excuses like “I really should be putting away the laundry rather than writing”, the better. I began writing Be Surf in February or March 2020 and I published it end of August 2020.

Just to belabor this point even further: The idea of the traditional publishing cycle made me want to take a nap. I thought about the fact that I could work for a year or more to get a traditional deal, then work another year or more on the manuscript and I just couldn’t bear the thought.

Moreover (thank you, Merri Weinberg for teaching us all of the best transitions in AP English), I’ve always wanted to do things my way. It’s not necessarily better, but it’s mine. I feel on the outside I have always presented as a rule follower but the truth is, when it comes to the important stuff, I’ve always wanted to make my own rules. I have a father and a mother who abided their own ideas and I’m over the moon for that.

Take all this and add more transparency with sales and the feeling I can promote it in ways that feel authentic to me, and I thank the universe daily that this is the path I find myself on.

Additional resources:

If you’ve ever thought about writing a book but, like me, the thought of traditional publishing overwhelmed you, I suggest the following two books:

Joanne Penn, Successful Self-Publishing: How To Self-Publish An Ebook, Print Book And Audiobook

and

Helen Sedwick, Self-Publisher’s Legal Handbook

Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creating Living beyond Fear

Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro: Tap your Inner Power and Create your Life’s Work

First Step to Forgiveness

I work with a holistic health coach and this week, she suggested I pick a topic that I felt I had a lot to say about, and start writing consistently about it.

She named a few suggestions but the one that jumped out at me immediately was forgiveness.

“Forgiveness,” I said. “That’s the one.”

After my mother took her life, I slithered and wiggled around through life like a mud bug for a long time.

I wanted to be Anywhere Else By Inside of This Skin.

The thought of all the terrible things I’d said to my mother—the thought of of all the venom spewed in teenage angst, years before she died, the thought of all the times I’d lied to her, put her last in terms of plans. That, coupled with the fact that I’d chosen to step back over the last couple years of her mental illness—had opted out of being there in a sense—these things corroded my heart.

And I came to believe, in no conscious way but in a deeprooted, invisible way, I simply came to believe it that I was no good. That there was no goodness inside of me and that I was at the core no good.

Do you know what it’s like to feel no good?

That feeling of wanting to shake out of yourself like a robe, that feeling of wanting to obliterate all sentient thoughts and feelings by any means necessary so they can’t haunt you?

That is suffering. And for me, it came from my own self—the narratives I was writing in my head, the awful words that truth or lie, I was repeating to myself, quickly eroding my sense of self worth.

It took me a long time to recognize that I was missing forgiveness—that a lack of forgiving myself was the thing that was ruining my life.

I felt despair that there was no undoing the awful things I had done and said to my mother before she died. She was gone—her pulverized bones and flesh a part of the ocean we’d swirled her ashes in and her spirit Somewhere Else.

There was no second chance.

After a few years of this gray, heavy, dark despair—after a few years of mud crawling my way through life, of sinking like a stone—one day I finally wondered: Is this really what I’m committing to?

Hm.

This is a very long life.

Am I really going to spend it committed to misery, hating myself?

This feels…a little…like…no fun at all?

I recall I was on the Green line train in Boston, ascending from the underground Kenmore stop to Commonwealth Ave and suddenly there was light all around me.

Perhaps, I thought, I could try a different way.

And the path to forgiveness opened up, like a secret trail in a mess of brambles I hadn’t seen was there. And it was a very very long path but I had begun.