As I get older, I find skateboarding to be more and more mentally exhausting. Let me explain.
Most of my old skate buddies have either stopped skating, or moved away. I see some of my old friends from time to time, and we skate about once a month or so during the summer together. For the most part though, I skate alone. I'll either go skate flat at this chilled spot that I know, or I'll hit the local park as they have a nice ledge that I like. I have varying degrees of stoke. Some days I'll go out and be okay with skating alone. Other days I'll feel like I should be skating, it's a nice day out, but I can't bring myself to go out and skate alone. It's tough.
Some days, I can bang off all these tricks no problem, and it's honestly the best feeling ever. Those are just days that I'm on. But then I'll come out a couple days later, and some of the tricks I KNOW I CAN DO and have done MANY times, will give me problems. It's like I'm constantly fighting to keep my tricks. Have them all one day, lose a couple the next session. Gain them back that same session, only to come back next time and I've lost some. I used to be really consistent when I skated everyday as a child, but as an adult with a job, a girl, and other such things, I can't skate every day.
It comes to the point where I'll be skating a parking lot alone at like midnight, just struggling to do a certain trick or a few tricks that I know I can do, and I just stop and I'm like, what the fuck am I doing? Why do I care so much about this plank of wood with wheels? And why does not landing my stock tricks put in me in such a bad mood? It's like some sessions are just the best, and some sessions you just feel defeated by skateboarding. I can never seem to gain any kind of PERMANENT consistency with some of my tricks and it pisses me off to no end. It's not a throw your board at the wall anger, it's more like a mixture of depression and anger, knowing that I've been skating for about 6 years and some of the easier tricks give me more trouble than the harder ones and I don't fucking get it sometimes. Despite all this, I would never quit skating.
Anyways, does anyone else kinda feel like this about skateboarding sometimes? I think I might be taking skating a little too seriously, but it's hard not to when you're always skating alone.