I’ve been skating for about two and a half years. I don’t do anything impressive, but skating has become one of the most important things in my life, and not because I’m good at it (though I hope I will be someday!). It gives me several anchors that make my life more sustainable.

A reason to take structured care of myself

I want to skate well and beautifully, but I’m not 12 years old for that to just happen naturally. I need to work on my fitness, mental state, schedule and sleep to keep progressing. Sure, everyone needs all of that regardless of skating, but it’s a lot, and without enough motivation it’s very easy to let it slide.

What’s also really important — skating works like a litmus test, making the results of your efforts visible, which helps you keep going. A few months ago I started going to the gym, and within a couple of weeks I noticed I felt different on the board, that many things became easier, and that motivated me to keep going to the gym. If I hadn’t noticed the effect, I might not have had it in me to stick with it.

Interestingly, for a while after these changes I felt uncoordinated, everything worked differently from what I was used to, nothing came together. It passed after some time, once my body and nervous system adapted to the new capabilities.

Weak social ties

I’m an introvert and community is hard for me, so I’m glad skateboarding is something you can do alone. But even I appreciate that when I show up at the skatepark, everyone says hi, exchanges a few words. I noticed this after a break due to illness, and I missed it. It’s not that easy for an adult to make friends. These aren’t friends yet, but they’re a step toward that.

Trusting the process

Over time I’ve developed my own process for learning new movements and tricks (I’ll write about that separately). And I know that this process generally works. Today’s session might not go well, there might be setbacks, something I already knew how to do might suddenly stop working. But I know that if I keep following the process, I’ll move forward and get where I want to go.

This feels like a skill that matters well beyond skating: not chasing local optima, but trusting a process that will get you to the result, even if not by the most optimal route. After all, you’ll probably never know what the optimal path would have been, and what matters more is that you got where you wanted to go.

This is especially important for me because for most of my life I believed the opposite: that mastery means constantly working at maximum effort, constant tension. If you’re not hitting your peak today and every day, you must be doing something wrong, and maybe you should try something else. But skating was interesting enough for me to keep at it without seeing instant progress, noticing the smallest wins and steps forward. And discovering that a slow, regular process actually brings results - that was a big shift for me.

Confidence

I’ve almost learned not to compare myself to others. I’ve learned to trust that progress will come eventually. I’m working through my fear of coping and gradually overcoming it. I learned to ollie. I think I have plenty of reasons to respect myself and believe in myself.

Focus and a clear head

I’m constantly thinking. Mostly about work, but these days there’s plenty to think about compulsively. I have trouble sleeping: I wake up an hour and a half before my alarm and start thinking. A session at the skatepark is a way to stop that stream, to focus on my body, on the movement, on the board, on the present moment. For me it’s a kind of meditation.

Becoming my younger self

Sometimes I come to the park early on a weekend morning and skate in a half-empty park with my headphones on, music playing. I can’t imagine what other activity could give me this feeling of youth, like I’m a teenager again, but with all of my experience. It’s a wonderful feeling of freedom and maturity at the same time, something like a spring day.

And this sense that I’m becoming what I wanted to be when I was seventeen. That’s pure joy.