#Pivot Fakie | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dzpenumbra · 2 years

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Let's talk skateboarding tonight. Big fucking surprise after my post the other night about how I watch skate or skate related videos pretty much every night... Here's something really fucking cool about how skating should be viewed by all skaters, and what it can bring to literally anyone's life.

In re-learning how to skate, I find something very unique has happened. I have had to reset my bar for accomplishment lower than it's been in well over 10 years. You see, skating is entirely about personal accomplishment. From day one, you start setting goals.

1. Balance on the damn thing.

2. Balance on the damn thing while it's moving.

3. Ride from here to there without bailing or falling.

4. Ride a bit further.

Then, once you start getting comfortable riding, you can add in another dimension:

5. Try going down that hill.

6. Try going down that hill FAST.

7. Try rolling into that bank.

8. Try dropping into that quarterpipe.

You're still improving riding, but your adding more depth, more complexity to your language of riding. You "unlock" new places to skate, otherwise avoided because it was scary or risky or too hard. Your world expands. Then you start adding more dimension:

9. Try manualing.

10. Try going up a quarterpipe and rolling back fakie.

11. Try going up a bank, pivoting, and going back down regular.

Even more terrain unlocked. And manuals allow you to essentially do harder versions of what you already developed while riding, AND help a ton to learn pivots. Then you add even more:

12. Try Rock to fakie on a quarter.

13. Try stalls on curbs and ledges.

And the big game changer...

14. Learn to Ollie.

Yep, that one's a big accomplishment - from there you can ollie off of things, you can ollie over things, you can ollie up things. What used to be obstacles blocking your path (like the big hills and steep banks used to be), are now opportunities for tricks, *Achievements* in Xbox language. But look back at how much of a crazy journey full of huge accomplishments and improvement it has been even before the first ollie. Fucking nuts, and so overlooked.

My bar used to be set with my goal tricks being the likes of Boneless 360 and Nollie 3 Shuv to Nosestall on ledges. Now, I'm happy if I land a Boneless 180 and ride away clean. But it's hard to really embrace it the same way. I vividly remember landing dozens, hundreds of that exact trick like 10 years ago. It's hard to let myself get pumped about an accomplishment I've already made tons of times, it just doesn't really hit the same. It doesn't feel like an accomplishment. That's what I'm trying to break free of.

I'm frustrated with it because I'm much more confident on my snowskate and bridged back into skateboarding via snowskating. In one season, I went from trying to remember how to do proper moving pop shuvits and ride comfortably to doing bigspin boardslides, kickflip, heelflip and varial flip. I sank every day of that snow season into skating and holy fuck did it pay off. But my skateboarding just doesn't get the same level of time commitment. "I can only do it at the park," says my inner saboteur, "snowskating I can do anywhere." But really, she just doesn't want me to embarrass myself in front of people half my age and doesn't want to admit it out loud. So stupid.

What I need to keep reminding myself is that me even going to the skatepark at all after 10 years of not skating is way bigger now than that Boneless 360 was when I skated every day between and after classes in college. THAT is the gift of skating. That way of looking at life as accomplishments, looking at everyday obstacles as potential achievements. Being incredibly depressed and challenging yourself to get out of bed, make coffee and do something nice for yourself - that should be treated like your first time dropping into a quarterpipe.

So if this doesn't resonate with anyone else yet, this is a note to self. Next time you think your achievement is mundane and silly and not that big of a thing, whatever... think about when you're at a skatepark and you see a kid trying over and over to roll down a bank, bailing and bailing, over and over. Then he gets serious, he gets pumped, he gets confident, and he goes for it. And he eats shit. But he gets up, someone grabs his board for him. They encourage him, say "dude you were so close, just lean forward a bit more". He looks determined, he climbs back to the top. He stares it down, lines up his board, drops in and rolls away. You get so excited for that kid, what a fuckin feeling he's having right now! Anyone who was watching is so stoked for him. Even if they could roll down that bank with a blindfold on. They remember what it was like.

So I guess the lesson is... don't hold yourself by other peoples' standards. Your accomplishments are relative to your narrative and your goals, not those of others. If your goal is to learn to stand on a board or to learn how to tre flip a 5 set, those are just different pages of the same book. They are not "better" or "worse", just different levels of developed complexity that are a product of cumulative experience and choice. What IS good - trying, failing, trying again. What IS bad - giving up, avoiding.

Don't let the fear of failure (and subsequent embarrassment, shame, weakness) prevent you from ever engaging something you're excited to try. Failure is temporary, and gives mountains of information to learn from - XP points. Never trying is eternal.

#diary #journal #stream of thoughts #skateboarding #self care #self improvement #motivation #accomplishments #achievements #goals

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dzpenumbra · 1 year

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3/30/23

Today was a pretty cool day. I thought I caught up on sleep, but apparently I didn't because I've been exhausted all day. I did that yoga routine I enjoyed yesterday again, it was just as nice today. Ate on the floor and watched YT, then showered. Then I called back the health center. They had left me a message this morning, they got me in with a new doctor. I got set up with an appointment tomorrow at 3:15. Just a 15 minute get-to-know-you kinda thing, I guess... same as before... But I strongly doubt they do more than 15 minutes for anything but surgery anymore. Shit's crazy. So yeah, we'll see how that goes.

Then, I strapped my new board to my backpack, got on my hybrid board and rode up to the local skatepark. It was only about... idk, less than 2 miles, I'd say. Uphill the whole way. But... my electric board made quick work of that.

I tried riding in the bike lane... and accidentally hit someone's side view mirror with the wheel of my board strapped to my back. I felt really bad. I didn't mean to. I just... there was only one lane on the left side, and I ride regular... and the board is on my back... and the lane is like... really fucking narrow... I don't think it did any damage, I just... I felt bad. It made me anxious.

I found the park very easily and it was just... complete DIY thrown together hometown crust park. And I was totally cool with it! It reminded me of the park I skated growing up in my hometown. And it was tucked away on what used to be an old tennis court, and it was really set back into nature, so it was nice to be around trees again and all that. When I got there, a kid came over to me. It was the kid who sold me my board and recommended the place! XD He and a friend were skating. They were really good, I was impressed. And humbled. And I just sorta... did my thing. Second session of the season, first one at this park, just... trying to find things I felt comfortable doing.

I think I was there close to 2 hours. I got nosemanual-shuv back, which was a cool feeling. Which should mean nollie shuv isn't far off. Which means pop shuv is somewhere in the ballpark eventually. Nollie is coming back slowly, ollie is getting really dialed in. Front 1s are going okay, there was this really beat up old funbox there and I did one off the side of one of the kickers. It took a few tries, I was feeling really unsteady landing fakie on loose trucks, it's still a new experience for me, but I got it there. I got a few BS noseslides on a little concrete curb, and on the coping of a low manny pad too, which was cool. I have BS so much better than FS, they feel so different. I honestly don't know how to carry my weight on FS, I think I sit way too far "forward" (while moving backwards) and I just slip out... or I sit all my weight entirely on top of my nose and it just stalls and I basically pivot quickly to fakie. I'll have to play around with my weight a bit, I think, I'm guessing that's probably what's doing it.

More and more people started flooding in, which I was not used to at all. And after a while, I realized I was just kinda... standing around and not really skating much. I was pretty anxious. I had headphones in, everyone else there seemed to know each other, for the most part. I was the oldest one there by a fucking longshot, and it made me a bit self-conscious. I feel like when people see someone in their mid-30's at a skatepark, they expect them to like... be good. And I'm really not that good, honestly. Just being realistic. I have experience, I can do some tricks, but I wouldn't say I'm... "good". So... since I was feeling anxious, I went over to the opposite side of the park from where I had been camped, to just... go outside my comfort zone.

I started skating that manny pad, it was like... 8 inches tall? I really wish they had an even lower one, but it's a nice height. So... I decided at one point... "I'm going to ollie up onto it." Not really the most "impressive" thing in the world, since I can literally ollie like... I don't know, more than twice that height. But I didn't go for it because it was "impressive", I went for it because I was scared of it. I was scared of hanging my back trucks, as always. Or... just some unknown fear of like "you're gonna fuck it up and wreck" or something, that force that just glues your shoes to the ground. And I was just like... no... No... I really just didn't want that to fucking win. And I wanted to push against it and prove it wrong. So I did one tiny practice ollie over a crack in the pavement and said fuck it and went for it and did it first try. No problem at all. No one even noticed! XD Of course, I mean... what would they be noticing? They had no idea the battle going on in my head, for all they knew that was an everyday trick for me.

Most of the ramps had big puddles of water and crap at the base of them, but I found a few skatelite ramps that were clean and dry and tucked away at the back of the park, so I went for it. I was playing around with different powerslide and pivot powerslide combinations. I like them, they're weird. Drifting powerslide rotations on skatelite feels similar to doing what I used to call "spin slides" on snowskates, but it has a lot more grip and friction so you can actually control it a lot more rather than just kinda dialing in how much force you need to throw into the rotation and then praying to all the gods you choose to worship. I did a lot more than I was planning. I can pretty comfortably do both FS and BS powerslides on a bank now, and BS pivot powerslide is one of my go-to fun tricks so that's definitely in the bag. What I tried to do was basically... I over-rotated one of the powerslides and I realized that with more force I could probably keep the rotation going. So I took the FS powerslide and tried to turn it into a full 360 powerslide, coming back down the ramp fakie. Again... I had the whole... not used to riding loose trucks fakie problem. But... I did land it. One or two were a bit segmented, like powerslide... split second pause... second powerslide. But I did get a pretty smooth one. And I did one where I reversed the rotation and rewinded it, which was cool feeling but I have no idea how it looked.

That session on the ramp was pretty fun and I really started getting creative and trying new things. The ramp was much steeper than anything I've really ridden before, definitely steeper than the banks back at the old hometown park. But I started to get used to it pretty quickly. Oh, and I also did ollie to fakie and FS 1 on it, so that was cool. I really think I just need to put in the hours to get comfortable and used to being on a board in a lot of different positions. That made a huge difference with snowskating. Just cruising and getting used to my boardfeel in different situations. Like... two of the best things I did just in general for snowskating were to 1) just cruise the sidewalks and bomb the hill at the park, and 2) practice landing ollies with a decent amount of speed. Getting used to how it felt to be on the board at different angles and different speeds, with different foot positions was very helpful all-around, and with the ollies, landing... practicing landing on a super low-friction object and riding away with a decent amount of momentum helped a ton in overall confidence in landing shuvs and flips at any speed. So... I need to build up that familiarity with my board, and that will come in time. Especially if I keep riding my electric board too, being on a board will be complete second nature to me if I use it to travel literally everywhere.

After all that, I decided to call it. There were storms predicted tonight, and the prediction did come true. And I was just... exhausted, and knew I still had to ride home. So... off I went. And the ride back was all downhill, which was nice. It was fine. Until... I came across a broken needle in the fucking street. And it just... really upset me. Because I felt a lot safer than I expected to throughout the day. I had been building up so much anxiety and paranoia, and then I went and it was like... college kids and people walking their dogs and shit. And I was just like... "wow, these are like... normal people." And then those fucking junkies had to throw my anxiety one fucking shred of evidence. Which is all that fucker needs sometimes. Ugh. So... I can plot out a different route there if needed? I can try, at least? Maybe it's just that one section of town that's a bit run-down, I don't know. Ugh. It just left a bad taste in my mouth, you know? So yeah, I just... had to look past that, I guess. And keep my eyes forward.

Since I got back, it's been pretty chill. I'm exhausted. I did more desire path project work, up to 60 runs now, the path is still not forming in-game, but my map is coming along nicely. I think I'm going to shoot for 100 runs, then maybe start a new path from one of the established points or something. Not sure yet.

And while I was making dinner, I tried to make a salt solution so I can try to grow my own salt crystals. It's been on my to-do list since the week I moved in. I followed the instructions and everything, I'm just... there was a TON of salt leftover, so I don't know if the solution will be saturated enough? But we'll see, I guess. It's going to sit and separate tonight, then tomorrow evening I'll filter it and then probably set up my first batch and then... in a few weeks, I should have some homegrown crystals. Pretty cool.

And yeah, that's pretty much the day. New doctor visit tomorrow, therapy after, then who knows. But for now, I'm gonna go try pass out.

#diary #journal #online journal #stream of consciousness #stream of thoughts

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