The more I look around, I'm beginning to realize that I am Quiver-poor. I see all these shiny, finny boards floating around the blogosphere. Photos like the one above (poached from surfysurfy) taunting me while I "make do" with 4 boards. I am very lucky in one aspect. My boards were gifted to me by either thoughtful people who gave out of their excess and kindness, or my pride and joy, the Pavel Speeddialer that my wife won for me at the San O Hawaiian Surf Club luau raffle a couple years ago.
One is a beautiful 7'0" Harbor single-fin that's actually not even mine, it belongs to a good friend who is living in Las Vegas, and lets me use it in his absence. My other two boards, a Ukulele Drifter was given to me by a customer of mine, while my shortboard was a beat-up extra owned by an old co-worker who is a OC bro who gets more boards given to him than he know what to do with.
My daily blog checklist taunts me on a daily basis, hanging tantalizingly sweet morsels of awesomeness in front of me through my computer's window. Showing me what is available, but not to me. Sure there are reasons that this could be my fault. I have priorities that keep the desired Hess shortboard, Grain log, Joe Bark paddleboard, Bonzer Bumblebees, misc. thumbs and hulls out of my reach that I could attain should I reorganize my spending pattern at the expense of my credit rating (and quite possibly my marriage!). Luckily all I have to do is go home to my wonderful family to know my priorities are in the right place. Turn on the TV and see the various clips in videos of beaming children in third-world countries perfectly happy surfing on discarded bits of plywood, or proud as can be of the patched-up discard left by a traveling surfer. This gives me a perspective into not just my surfing, but my life as a whole.
Surfing is a driving force in my life, something that helps me stay centered and focused through the fast-paced consumer-driven life all around me in Southern California. As I think about it though, while surfing is a driving force towards a better and more full life, it is not my life. this may seem sacrilegious to many, but it is true of me and I'm sure many other "normal" wave sliders out there. I still live the surfing "lifestyle" in some way, no matter if I'm in the water 1 day in a month or the good times where I'm able to go out several times in a week, or if I own one board or thirty.
The surfing lifestyle is a looking-glass into life, the good and the bad sides. While all of us desire nothing more than to be in the water, partaking in a plethora of surf-craft, we often have to sacrifice for those things that are intrinsically more important. Sacrifice is a dirty word in our modern society, instant gratification of our desires is seen as one of our inalienable rights. The way we keep ourselves truly centered and focused on what is important is not by how much of what we want we're able to attain, but instead being content in realizing how much we truly have. That little kid on the scrap of plywood probably lives a more true "surfing lifestyle" than any of us.
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