Fire By Sea

Of all the roads I’ve traversed in my life, I feel like they’ve all led to where I am now: the North Shore of Oahu. I’m settled and it feels permanent, and here’s why:

It’s all or nothing out here

Forget hiding out and skirting away your life—the entire energy here exposes you. It all starts with the body—the heat forces you to be half naked, jumping in and out of the cool ocean when you can. Being more naked in turn forces you to be comfortable with yourself and around others. The comfort then forces you to question the kind of person you are.

I don’t see how long someone who is not comfortable with who they are inside and out could sustain living here (money and income questions aside). One exception might be someone who is on drugs and has to turn to crime to survive, but of course that’ll catch up with anyone sooner or later.

People judge you on your character

Finally, I say! Unlike the Big Island where people sugar-coat life to cover up their obsession with net worth, or San Franciscans who base everything on the grand projects you’ve worked on, the North Shore boils down to character.

You will not hear the quintessential “what do you do?” but rather are you a good person, and do your actions reflect that? People won’t actually say that simple because it’s expected.

I’ll write more on the character of character of the North Shore as time goes by.

Outdoor living prevails

When you live somewhere—or at least the extreme-ish places I’ve been—it’s mostly indoor living, which means basing the bulk of your life indoors. Not the case here. You have to be outside to get into this place. In fact, you have to be in the ocean. In the barrel, to be exact.

A worldwide superstar was dropping off his child on the first day of school, and I happened to be in the same classroom doing the same thing. Then I got inspired. Why?

When you meet people doing amazing things and living amazing lives, you have two options: be a player hater or do the same as them. Go out and make an awesome life for yourself and others.

This superstar happens to be someone I deeply admire (his art), and have been deeply influenced and touched by his work for many years. Now our boys are in the same class.

Today I happen to feel really down because I feel like I’m simply alive to make money. I need to work to earn a living; it’s a simple but painful fact. I feel like I’m outside of the VIP room like all the other chumps looking in. It’s probably how everyone else in the country feels, but maybe some more than others (especially the artists!).

But weirdly enough I’m so keenly aware of it that I can’t help but figure out how to change it. I have an idea but it of course is risky. Money must always be made, but the truth is making money for the sake of making it is boring and unfulfilling to the max. It sucks.

I don’t want anyone’s printed advice anymore. I’m in a very alive community with some very successful people (ahem) and I need to seek them out and be uncomfortable and put myself out there. This is my last stand.

I’ve been here on the North Shore for almost two weeks, and there’s definitely a different attitude in the air, and no doubt in time—the water. I can only compare it to where I’ve been—Waimea, San Francisco and Honolulu, so here goes:

• It’s deeply sensual here, meaning nearly most everyone is aware of their bodies because they use it all the time. To live here you have to love being outside and moving around. It’s not a place for long periods of sitting indoors, in front of a computer, living virtually. And I like that.
• There is a tight community that’s hard to break into. You can tell by the way the locals walk and talk: they’re guarded about their lives, lifestyle and life quality—all of which seem to be pretty damn good. They’re cordial but not overly friendly and look out for one another, and likely judge outsiders by the quality of their character (at least the good ones).
• There is a slight sense of poverty and desperation, simply because there is no way to make a good living out here. You’re either a contractor-type or small-business entrepreneur or a professional surfer. There are clearly people here not making money and stuck here, and they’ve turned to petty thievery…and drugs.
• It’s dead right now because it’s summer. In the winter this whole town and coast is going to light up and reveal the true character of the North Shore, and it’s going to be wild.
• In Waimea, people judge you for your money. Certainly not the case here because people aren’t all loaded and sending their kids to private school and bragging about it.
• In San Francisco, people judge you on what you’re doing, what you’ve accomplished. Definitely not the case here unless you’re in the higher echelons of surfing. People are really “doing much” here in terms of career accomplishments, but rather it’s the way they’re living that counts.
• In Honolulu, everyone seems to want to be at the top of the highest money pile, or at least look like they are. It’s weird to witness the hoards of consumers in the shopping center seek attention and validation through what they’re spending their money on.

Of getting an email for a screening interview with my dream job, then having a really good call because there’s no pressure and I’m relaxed and not desperate for a job—the day before I drop my car off at the dock to Oahu and we load our container.

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

If I get a call back I will be tempted to go for it, even though the end result is like a murder-suicide: leaving the family once again to work in San Francisco? Except this time we’re locked in a year lease with all of our stuff to haul around.

But there’s hope: what if I somehow got the job with full disclosure on my family situation and they worked with me. Who knows what that could mean but perhaps where I could be remote half the year or travel or whatever.

All I know is that I can’t play games anymore. My last job was yet another series of gut-wrenching hoop-jumping, much like the job before with the crazy moon man. It’s no wonder I’m living far away from all this shit on the North Shore!

What I need to do is balance long term with short term, and keep my family’s best interests in mind. Our son wants so bad to be in Hawaii but he knows it’s limiting. Our eldest daughter is too scared to go anywhere else but I know she’d like another place. The other two would love it up there no doubt and let’s not forget my wife, who’d go back too.

Anyway, it’s ironic, just like that song—

An old man turned 98,

won the lottery, died the next day.

What I really really want is both. I want a great job in a cosmopolitan city and call Hawaii my home.

I live with it everyday. The truth is that I really am balding—my hair is dropping out at an alarming rate and it’s obvious form looking at me that I’m losing hair.

The worst part is on the crown of my head and then the very top where the cowlick is. The crown part has had me worried for years, but lately I discovered that the top is even worse! It all goes down when I wash my hair in the shower and see at least 10-11 hairs in my hands from adding the wash/conditioner to my scalp.

I got one of those blading patterns that will leave me looking like a friar monk with that ring of hair around the sides but a shitty barren top.

Before I went to California and basically stressed myself out really bad, I used to meditate in the shower to grow my hair back and it worked. It was the power of will, intent and concentration that helped it grow. Now I have none of those virtues — I’m just some balding guy approaching 40. Come on…

The other side to this is that it shouldn’t really matter if I’m going bald. Fuck it. As long as I’m doing awesome shit, it shouldn’t matter. Look at Kelly Slater. Seth Godin. Kojak. And so on.

What I’m doing now is using a special shampoo that’s a tad pricey and some natural solution I run on my scalp once a week for 3 months. I’m 1/3 into and if anything it’s a good placebo. After I rub it in I do feel like my hair is less likely to fall out. And perhaps it doesn’t.

All I know is that I better do something amazing or I really will be my own worst enemy—an overweight unhappy balding guy in his 40s.

Geographically, who knows —that seems out of my hands these days. But professionally, I will be creating content and getting paid for it. Not really as a writer per se but an editor.

I know that the only thing holding me back is my mental state. It’s fucked. I don’t believe in myself and it’s bullshit. People won’t care about what I’m creating if can’t be deeply passionate about it myself. And disciplined to keep at it day after day.

So in a year I must be over the career hump-funk which I am seeped in now. It’s rock bottom, and the only way I can pull out of it is by myself. No job can save me now. It’s the way the signs have bene pointing.

I’ll have so many obstacles which can easily become excuses: insufficient working space, too hot, surf is up, can’t focus. That’s all bullshit stuff. Just gotta sit down every day and maintain a vision, and in order to do this I’ll need a few things:

• People to engage with—be it virtual or in person, being around other people will certainly boost whatever I’m doing
• Taking time to learn new things – the Internet evolves quickly, people innovate quickly. The trick is to be breaking new ground.
• High-leverage work – finding people to do the work I don’t like or takes too much of my time.

If I don’t pull this off, I fear I’ll lose everything, and that will determine the next phase of life for me, my wife and the entire family. The pressure is on and this is the final piece of “unsolved mystery” which I absolutely must overcome. Without confidence, career and cash flow—I simply can’t proceed to the next echelon and I’ll be stuck in mojo-land for a very long and painful time.

Now that the dust is settling, and I’m off to Oahu and not the Bay Area like I thought, I’d like to describe how I now feel after that crazy year:

• The taste is more bitter than sweet. It all comes down to the people. The people who weren’t directly involved or responsible for my livelihood were 100% awesome. All others were not cool. Emotionally and spiritually gawky and stunted. Sickly souls. Kinda ironic because everyone else made it survivable. Also makes sense, though.
• It seems like a hidden ocean. Like something that happened in another dimension. My memories of running all those days alone in Dogpatch and Potrero feel like they are so far away, like the blurry part of a tilt shift photo. What was I doing there?
• I tend to compare the things around me to the things in San Francisco. La Boulange vs. Waimea Coffee Company. Hawaii startup to San Fran startup. SF Facebook friends and their updates versus everyone else’s. In other words, San Francisco is my new measuring stick.
• I still freaking want to go back. I wasn’t done there, or anywhere on the Mainland for that matter. Going to Oahu feels like a very strange detour—I’m going back to the ocean right after breaking up with her. Shit—I still remember that really warm day on the back porch in the Mission when I declaratively de-waxed my board as a testament to the end of surfing. And now I’m moving to the North Shore?
• Humbled. I got steamrolled by the harshness, the challenge of what it really takes to be successful. I mean it’s cool and all that I faced it head-on like an effin’ kamikaze , but the story was not supposed to end that way.

Then again, the story isn’t done. It’s just the end of a chapter.

I’m moving to the North Shore of Oahu. The literal mecca of surfing, and I couldn’t be more miserable.

The reason? My marriage. It’s very slowly unraveling, the stitches coming undone. My partner is just as unhappy as me, and it feels like something that only gets worse.

I have a very strong hunch that there are many couple that feel this exact same way. Too exhausted and angry to put the effort into a hazy chance at reconciliation. Too much damage and suffering.

How it got this way

• Kids. They drain every last drop, or rather we drain every last drop of ourselves on them. Kids sleeping in our bed for years, all for the sake of…?
• Job. I don’t have one. I’m in career failure mode right now, so is she. We feel like losers.
• Money. We never have enough, and feel crushed under the pressure to constantly have it to pay for basic survival things.
• Drinking. Not a say goes by without a drink. Ever. 3.5 is the nightly average. We get tired easier, our livers get mad and our bellys stick out. Plus it clouds life and creates more anger.
• Depression. The collective result of all the above.

What to do about it

I’m not sure. Of course there’s that thing inside that says “it will all be better once we move,” but I’m old enough to know that’s bullshit. We’re not affectionate, we don’t hug, we don’t really spend time alone together, we’re crabby and bitter and almost 40. I’m over it and I know she is, too.

What comes next I hope is positive. I want things to work and they still can, even though it feels more like theory.

I wonder about this marriage thing, I really do. What’s it all about? It’s supposed to be love but we feel like we’re kept in cages away from each other. I’m upset…

I’m on the cusp of netting $260 for selling someone a plugin that costs $79. Is it right?

I’m not sure. One part of me say why not—this guy is in a bind and needs a solution. I’m selling him a solution that I know will make him happy, and exercising my entrepreneurial freedom.

The other half of me says to tell him about the plugin I’m going to use so all he’d have to do is buy it himself and never talk to me again. I help him out with free advice at the cost of a sale.

The second half is the editor talking. I feel like it’s my duty to tell people about these things to make their life easier and save them money. After all, I’d want the same.

I’ve been in situations like this before and sometimes I go against my gut (which is to tell him), which no doubt results in some bad shit happening to me.

Of couse I need the money. But the real question is if this is what is means to be an entrepreneur. It reminds me of the story of the plumber who came in and turned one screw to fix an impossible problem and charged the guy something like $25,000. His reason to the sticker-shocked owner was that “you never would have know to turn that screw.”

There’s also a middle ground where I charge him less for my troubles. All it comes down to is him discovering that he paid quadruple for something—I’d like to know what he feels right at that moment: contempt, indifference, rage, self-deprecation?

Whatever I do, I don’t want to be a moral idiot or a greedy businessman. I’ll have to sleep on this and write my response, even though I already know what it is.