To the 5 or 6 people that have visited this site more than once, I owe you an apology. If you have read the blog posts, you might have noticed in the “Why Do You Surf” piece that I was working on a small little investigation, a trial of sorts, to try to find some core reasons behind why people love surfing so much. I stated I would share some of my findings in July. Obviously, nothing of the kind has been posted, and all in all there has been no content to keep anyone interested in what I am trying to do here. Consider this my beg-your-pardon post. My excuse, reasoning, cop-out, whatever you want to call it, here it is.
But, before we begin, I would like to add that in the future, such lengths of silence are not apart of the plans for this website/blog/company, whatever it is here that we’re working on. This is the new beginning for Hvoide, and you have my word we are hitting the ground running, starting now.
“All I have in this world is my balls, and my word.”
Life is fucking crazy sometimes. It seems like this giant lottery wheel that we spin each day wondering what we’re going to land on. Here are a few of my personal higher probability hitters:
HOWLING ONSHORE. HUNGOVER. ANGRY GIRLFRIEND. WORK THE JOB YOU HATE.
The smaller portioned slices look something like:
RUN OUT OF WEED. SCORE ON A BAD FORECAST. GOLF. DENTIST. EVERYONE IN THE HOUSE GETS COVID.
Lastly, there are those little tiny slivers that you don’t really look at because they don’t usually strike and the letters are so small and hard to read, but those show some options such as:
FIRED FROM JOB. HAVE A KID. MOM DIAGNOSED WITH CANCER.
Everyone has a bit of a different looking wheel, this is just a small snapshot of what I have been spinning lately. You only have so much control over your future, and this year has proven some of the extreme externalities that we are going to face for years to come. There are times like this when a society is collectively in a bad spot, and you have ‘experts’ like economists and social justice fighters looking to better the situation we are all in. Then we all have our individual issues that arise amidst a mess like this, which makes the whole fucking thing a wreck. Sure, most of us got some free money from the government to help us out. Maybe your making more money now on unemployment than at your previous job that you hated. Time to surf all day. Look into a side hustle. Spend the free money on some new needed gear. Surf trip. Read that book you’ve put aside for years. Watch a Star Wars marathon. Whatever the case, there are clearly some highlights to all of this. In my own personal life, the bad seems to have heavily outweighed the good in the past few months.
“Talk of the Devil, and he’s presently at your elbow.”
Giovanni Torriano
Out of 4 of my personal blog posts on this site, 2 of the posts I wrote about have recently showed their face in situations in my life that were pretty unexpected. The first post on here, I was complaining about people complaining about COVID. This was near the start of it all, back in March when I posted it, and the world clearly didn’t understand it as much as we do now. The weekend following the 4th of July, everyone in my immediate family, who I live in the same house with, got positive tests. Having a young son, my lady and I decided to leave ASAP to avoid him getting any symptoms, although we knew it wasn’t supposed to be too dangerous for children.
This brings me to my “3 Day Lot Rule” post. Luckily, my dad had a place we could stay at just about 30 minutes north from where we live. I didn’t bring my boards up with me when we first went because we left in a hurry, but I went back home to grab some necessities, so I tossed 2 boards in my car. I’ve surfed up there multiple times before, but never had much of a chance to explore the area and find any spots other than the one I knew. There was pretty close to no swell in the water for the whole 3 weeks we were up there, so I actually didn’t even get in the water. A week into quarantining up there my girl got sick, so she quarantined separately, again to avoid getting our kid symptomatically sick. Thus bringing a full 3 week dry spell for myself, right when I had the perfect opportunity to find some new waves, talk to some new faces and see what the culture was like just a short drive away.
It’s been an insane 2020 for myself to say the least, and there’s quite some rebounding to be done from this. My first step was to share this short little story to justify (hopefully) my inactivity in captaining this ship. I’m back now, for good, and I hope you’ll be along for a bit of the ride. Welcome back to Hvoide.
-Hwilsin