My name is Joan, I'm a translator and a surfer. I mean, surfing is an important part of who I am. To some extent, surfing has made me who I am.
I used to be different.
Many years ago, more than a decade ago, I was a dissatisfied worker in a major publishing house. He managed the contents of his website and from time to time he did reports and even reviewed books. From time to time I was given novels or essays and asked for a reading report. Those were the good times.
That's when I found out I'm not good at teamwork. I'm intolerant of other people's mistakes (not so much mine) and I'm quite manic.
I had been there for three years and it was burned. Now I see it clearly, but at the time I didn't quite understand what was going on. I just knew he had anger inside, a lot of anger.
I don't really know how or why I ended up with that wallpaper on my computer: a picture of Laird Hamilton's 80's making some of those impossible waves (Pipeline? Teahupoo?).) Every morning, when I turned on the device and took the first of the 15 cuts that could fall in a day, I would say to myself:"the day I left, the day I left everything... I start surfing". So, in a fantasy way, because I didn't even know if you could do it in the Mediterranean, if you could sell surfboards or anything.
Meanwhile, the burnout was growing. I wasn't quite me anymore. I had anxiety attacks, slept badly and had trouble getting up. My motivation was zero.
One day the company launched a plan for voluntary layoffs. The intention, I suppose, was to get rid of the older workers. But a large part of the younger ones asked to leave. Among them, tremendously creative, brilliant, valid people. People I've been in touch with since then.
There was a tug-of-war and one day I came down from the Personnel office with a signed casualty. That day, someone from my team, during a conversation, told me, surprised:
Joan, uncle... You just smiled!
Let's do a light fast-forward. It's been a month. I'm at sea, leaning terribly slouchingly on an old Bic board I found of second (or fifth) hand. I'm wearing a Decathlon neoprene from the old ones, those that looked like cork so stiff. I'm emerging in the middle of the foam after my umpteenth dive. The sea does with me what it wants; each wave is a new centrifuge.
I take my head out of the water and vacuum. I suck in the salty smell of the sea, that of the foam (that sweet smell that snaps like a bad drug). I feel the sun on my skin, the cold on my face. I am alive. It's Tuesday. I think of my ex-partners, dying under fluorescent bulbs in cubicles.
When I was very young, at school, we were given an exercise in imagining what we would be as adults. To the question "What would you like to work on?"I had answered," Anything but the clerk."
Twenty years later I realized that my Joan in elementary school was absolutely right. And that's what we're up to, fellas.
Surfing, in a way, has changed me. It has made me more peaceful, more smiling. It made me value every moment. It gave me calm and quiet. I have rediscovered the sensation of adventure. He's confronted me with my fears. He pissed me off. It frustrated me. And it has given me some of the moments in which I have felt most alive.
Before surfing, I was an angry clerk with the world. When I look back at that time, I no longer see myself. I see someone else, with different problems and different stories. I'm not mad at anything anymore. I see things that I don't like, but I've learned that there are things that can be changed and things that can't be changed. And we have to take care of it, not worry.
And that from time to time you have to take your head out of the foam, suck hard and notice the smell of the sea and the heat of the sun. And remember that one is alive.
