Snowboarding

And addiction

The week after I’d deleted Instagram from my phone (again), I started learning how to snowboard.

Maybe I’ll talk about the first time I deleted Instagram some other time, but let’s stay in the present. Here. Now.

Stay with me.

—

Sometimes, the world can feel like it is just too much, man. Shit’s fucked, and nothing is fair. Countless and endless little things (and a handful of monumental ones) pile up and drop on your shoulders like hail, pummelling your will and wearing your patience.

It feels like the universe is out to get you. And it feels targeted. Personal.

Relaxation feels like an impossible, privileged skill to learn. And you don’t have time for that. So, bit by bit, day by day, the tension gets stored in the corners of your body.

For me, I feel that tension the most in my shoulders, neck, and jaw.

Oh, and my dopamine receptors.

—

When I’d reach for my phone and tap on the Instagram app icon, I’d feel a visceral physical reaction.

It’s a sensation not too dissimilar from being incredibly full, at a mediocre all-you-can-eat buffet. You know the one, with the lukewarm spring rolls and the cliche interior decor and the sticky floor. Where you’re physically stuffed but compulsively and perpetually hungry for something more.

Something new.

Something else.

Something that is missing in you.

Something fundamental.

—

Social media is built on that something. And we all know what it is, whether we admit it or not.

I have yet to find another feeling that is even remotely close to the feeling of addiction. It pushes you away and reels you in at the same time. You’re so needy that you grasp at everything, afraid that if you don’t, you won’t be able to again. But everything is too much. Too big (we did it, America), too loud, too vivid, too instant, too high fidelity, too perfect. The too much-ness of it all overwhelms you, and you slip, for a split second.

In that split second, you stop thinking for yourself. You go on autopilot.

At first, it feels like a glitch. But soon, it becomes comfort. It’s a loop: the thumb swipes, the eyes glaze, the mind numbs. Looking at everyone else’s “ups” while feeling stuck in your “downs,” you feel the hunger in the pit of your stomach.

The hunger that doesn’t go away.

It’s not designed to. It’s designed to feel like both immensity and hollowness at the same time. An immensity that you can’t see the edges of, and a hollowness like a permanent ache.

—

My goal for my first snowboarding season was simple: get on a chairlift, get off at the top, and derive some enjoyment out of going down a full-sized hill.

Oh, and make it down in one piece.

I’m shocked to report that I achieved that a week ago.

—

But first, I had to fail.

I missed my first class for a work trip, and when I returned I stumbled around at the hill clumsily.

In those first two weeks of this chapter of my life called “mid-life crisis #5: attempting to snowboard for the first time in your life in your 30s”, everything sucked. It felt like a battle against something rigged to win against me: the snow, the wind, my own body, the world. I had hoped for at least a few moments of triumph and reprieve from the frustration of my constant falling and failing. But truly, I had none. The universe wanted me to learn patience and fortitude. I fell over and over, while tiny humans zipped by with effortless confidence, casually chatting about whatever tiny humans chat about these days.

In the bone-chilling wind and snow, on my hands and knees for the third time in a minute, I felt out of my elements, incompetent and humiliated. The only thing I could feel good about was that I always picked myself back up quickly. So that I can try again. And fail again.

My challenges were twofold.

First, despite logically knowing better, I kept staring at my feet. I didn’t trust my body to respond to the terrain, so I watched my board instead of where I was going.

Second, I was hyper-aware of my slow progress compared to the rest of my class. I couldn’t help but measure my struggles against their best runs, telling myself I just needed to put in twice the effort to “catch up.”

Staring at the immediate frustration with where I was, and where everyone else was, I fuelled my will to keep going with a familiar anxiety.

On the drive to the slopes last Saturday, I realized that neither staring at my feet nor thinking about “catching up” was effective. “They serve no purpose for me. I’m just sabotaging myself,” I explained my newfound insight to my partner.

“I know,” he said. Duh.

I had a new plan: Look up, hang loose, and most importantly, don’t look at what anyone else is doing.

Just me, working on me.

—

My partner is in a snowboarding class a few levels above mine, and his instructor had shown their group a technique called The Teapot. You extend one arm, and put the other behind you. Wherever you want to go, you dip that extended arm towards it, like performing a tea ceremony, pointing the teapot at a teacup.

When my partner shared this technique with me at the top of the bunny hill, a switch snapped on. I could almost hear the satisfying sound of something clicking into place.

The first time I tried The Teapot, I fell 5 times. Second time, I fell twice. By my third run down that bunny hill, I made it without falling. My partner watched me ride down, slightly chaotically but more or less in control, and asked me to take a leap of faith.

We went to the chairlift.

The last time I’d been on one was probably in 2014. As I dropped off the lift, slipping and falling almost immediately (for consistency), I found myself starting to ask: Can I really do this?

But I didn’t let myself think about the answer.

Less thinking, more doing.

Instead of outthinking the hill, I let the physical instincts I’d been clumsily building take over. When I go a little too fast, I fight the temptation to pull back, and I lean into it instead. It was a weird sort of surrender. Pouring into the motion rather than bracing against it.

I don’t want to paint an inaccurate picture here. To clarify, I’m no snowboarding prodigy. Believe me, I am still extremely clumsy. At some point I may have done an unintentional 360-degree spin, was airborne for a second, and then slammed into the snow like a sack of potatoes.

But even so, I surprised myself.

Truthfully, I didn’t expect the rhythm to find me so suddenly, like finding a light switch in total darkness. Or for the goal I’d set for the season to happen on a random Saturday afternoon. I was bracing for way more pure struggle before the first moment of joy.

And I did find joy.

My brain had been forced into a singular focus. When I reached the bottom, I realized my jaw wasn’t clenched.

For once, nothing else mattered. And the feeling of “nothing else matters” is such a bliss.

A rest we so rarely get.

I wasn’t hungry for something else.

Just me, working on me.

—

Since I deleted Instagram, I haven’t really thought about it much. I find that I actually do not care very much about how other people choose to live their lives. No, to be accurate, more like how other people portray the stories of their lives.

I know I only get to live my life, so I’m going to focus on that.

And enjoy the ride.