Skateboarding Ruined My Life

Skateboarding ruined my life. I read all these articles about how skateboarding saved people's lives because it kept them out of trouble from the rough neighborhood they lived in. 

For me, I lived in a pretty decent neighborhood growing up. It got pretty bad in later years so we moved out, but I always stuck with my friends and I never really saw the decline of the neighborhood that well. 

As far as skateboarding goes, it completely took over my life. It became a fixation. All I would do is think about skateboarding. I would read about skateboarding in skateboarding magazines. I would watch videos of skateboarding, over and over again. I would search skateboarding on the internet until I eventually began to make my own skateboarding videos. 

It's not all bad though. Those skateboarding videos that I would watch introduced me to new types of music and songs that I would probably have never heard had it not been for these videos. 

You could say skateboarding kept me out of trouble, but I was never really one to get in to trouble. I'm not saying I was a saint, but I was at least smart enough to not get caught. Sure, we'd run into administrators when we skated Trickum and get the cops called on us if we were street skating. We'd either run away or just get told not to skate here anymore. 

And growing up we didn't listen to punk rock. I had never even heard of it till probably some time in high school. We grew up listening to rap. Crunk rap from the ATL. We'd listen to Lil Jon and Dem Franchize Boyz. 

Lil' Jon and the East Side Boyz - Throw It Up, Youngbloodz - Presidential

I now realize that that music mostly sucks, except for a few classic tunes, but it was also probably the reason why I skated so slow. I looked up to the early 90's skaters and their style throughout high school. They all had tiny wheels and got mad technical on curbs. 

I gave up technical skills for speed. I used to be the manny pad king, now I just want to ride down hills and get my transition skills up. 

Maybe "ruined" isn't the best way to describe what skateboarding has done to me. It has made me who I am today and like an addict, I can't live without it. 

If you have free time go look up "Antiheroes Anonymous" on youtube. Antihero did a skit mimicking AA and replaced alcohol with skateboarding. It is genius. 

I can't really say skateboarding is a problem though. It is a healthy activity that promotes creative thinking, and athletic ability. 

How It Works If you want what we have to offer, and are willing to make the effort to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps. These are the principles that made our recovery possible: 

1. We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 

3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. 

4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. 

5. We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. 

6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 

7. We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. 

8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. 

9. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. 

10. We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. 

11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. 

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.