Healing begins where reacting ends.
A woman in the lineup yesterday dropped in on a wave she had no business taking. Ate it hard. Came up laughing. I couldn't remember the last time I did that.
Not wiped out. I wipe out plenty. I mean tried something I knew I'd fail at and felt nothing but joy about it.
I used to be bad at everything. That was the whole first decade of my twenties. I started a logistics company knowing absolutely nothing about logistics. Couldn't read a bill of lading. Didn't understand freight classifications. Mispronounced "palletize" in my first meeting with a supplier and the guy just stared at me.
But I didn't care. I was twenty and broke and had nothing to protect. Being bad at things was the cost of entry and I paid it gladly because what else was I going to do, go back to college?
Now I'm good at the things I do. Two hours a day. Dashboards. Digital products that sell while I sleep. I know exactly how to write a sales page, structure a product, price it, deliver it. I've done it enough times that the moves are automatic.
And I haven't started anything I didn't already know how to finish in over two years.
That's the trap. You get good enough at something that it runs on its own, and then you stop putting yourself in rooms where you're the dumbest person there. You stop trying things that might not work. Not because you lost your nerve. Because now you have something to lose.
When I was working seventy-hour weeks in a warehouse, I had no reputation. No audience. No revenue to protect. If I tried something and it was garbage, nobody noticed. The stakes were zero so the freedom was total.
Now everything I put out has my name on it. People have expectations. There's a version of me that exists in other people's heads and that version is competent. Knows what he's doing. Has it figured out enough to live on a beach and work two hours a day.
So I only do things that confirm that version.
I stopped trying to learn Portuguese three months into Lisbon because my accent was terrible and I sounded like a child ordering coffee. I dropped a photography habit I'd started because my first hundred photos were boring and I couldn't stand producing something mediocre. I turned down a chance to collaborate on a project outside my wheelhouse because I didn't want to be the guy in the room who needed things explained to him.
Every single one of those decisions felt reasonable in the moment. Smart, even. Protect your time. Stay in your lane. Don't waste energy on things that aren't going anywhere.
But they weren't strategic. They were fear wearing a smart outfit.
You've done this. Maybe you stuck with the skill set that got you here instead of learning the one that could take you somewhere new. Maybe you stopped writing or painting or playing music because you got successful at something else and being a beginner felt like going backwards. Maybe you only take on projects you know you can nail because a visible failure would crack the image.
It's not laziness. It's the opposite. You care too much about being good. And caring too much about being good is how you stop growing without realizing you've stopped.
The woman in the water yesterday was maybe twenty-five. She'd been surfing for about six months based on how she paddled. She was out of position, her timing was off, and she went for a wave that anyone with experience would've let pass. She got absolutely worked.
And when she came up she was grinning like she'd just gotten away with something.
I paddled over and told her nice try. She said thanks, I have no idea what I'm doing. She said it the way you'd say something you were proud of.
I spent the next hour trying things I normally wouldn't. Took off on a couple waves I wasn't sure about. Fell twice. Didn't look graceful. Didn't care, or at least cared less than usual.
It was the best session I've had in months. Not because the waves were good. Because I stopped performing competence in the water and just surfed like someone who still had something to learn.
Being bad at things wasn't the tax I paid on the way to getting good. It was the thing that made me feel alive. And I'd quietly stopped paying it the moment I could afford not to.
— Jose
