Over the last several posts, I’ve written stories looking back.

They were stories from my past.

I realized that I have been spending so much time here, wiggling my fingers for y’all, that I haven’t been engaging in the world to create stories in my present.

With that in mind, I had a fully empty day with no clients to see, reports to write nor blog post to come up with. Those posts were ‘written’ years ago when I worked as a clown, jumped into dumpsters or bugged out at the closing of Maple Leaf Gardens.

I needed to surf.

With that in mind, I dropped the kids off at school loaded up the car and set out.

The day was a miserable, dreary affair.

The warm, sunny weather from the day before had vanished. The chills of late winter / early spring had returned.

Yet I was determined to reconnect with the feeling - the feeling of stepping into liquid and gliding down the face of a wave, carving a smooth line at the bottom then racing back up to the lip - wha-pah! Smack the lip then charge on down the line.

I don’t surf the kind of waves that get me ‘pitted’. Those waves are steep, dangerous and difficult to paddle into.

And at the same time, they need to be big enough to make all the work of getting into a wetsuit worth the effort.

With the car fully packed with surf gear, coffee and snacks, I set out with my favorite play list pumping with an eye for adventure.

The forecast seemed favorable. The ocean buoy data supported this notion, so I set out to my favorite piece of the ocean.

Forty five minutes later I arrived to find all of the spots in the area essentially flat. The swell was coming from the wrong direction. It wasn’t making its way into my little corner of the world.

Mildly disappointed, I was undeterred. A day of surfing turned into a day of exploring one of the hikes near my favorite beach. It wasn’t what I had hoped for but it was the experience on offer.

Sometimes that’s all we can do. We can prepare, get excited and show up. And sometimes the world isn’t there with head high, peeling waves waiting for us. Sometimes it’s a matter of taking what we’ve been given and making the best of a mediocre day.

It’s like the old saying goes:

My worst day at the beach is always better than my best day at the office.