Opening Remarks

Here it is all that will ever see this. I follow several blogs and can never decide exactly what I want to do with a blog that I create. At the end of the day, I really just want to use this as a place to get things out there. It could be something I see that inspires me, or telling a story from the day. I figure instead of trying to narrow myself down to one thing, I can just do whatever I want that day. Today it would seem...I will ramble on about nothing. As I sit here on the couch with a sleeping dog next to me, I realize just how lucky I am. I just recently moved down to San Clemente, CA where I am within walking distance to the pier. I get to surf as often as I like, which is great because over the past couple years it has been surfing that has helped me keep my sanity as my immediate post-college life has progressed. I never would have thought that surfing would be my sanity keeper. Its crazy how life progresses. Even just the few events that lead to right where I am now are quite incredible. This should be fun.... Growing up in Northern California I never surfed. The truth is that I think before college I had actually been is the ocean so few times I could count it on two hands. Its not that I didnt like the ocean, but its not easy to spend much time in 50 degree water without a wetsuit. So all through some 19 years of my life wet by and I had not found any considerable love for the ocean. It was the summer after my freshmen year of college and I was taking a little roadtrip down to San Diego. The purpose of our trip was to drop a few things off in Azusa for me and then pick up a bunch of things for his sister in San Diego. He had this idea that he would take me surfing once we got down there, you see he was going to school at UCSB and had an ocean view from his dorm. It was during that first session of my life at La Jolla Shores, that I found considerable joy in sliding across the water. Over the next two years I gained interest is surfing, but never really got myself to a point in which I surfed more than every few months. Then, as though it were fate, I landed an internship at O'Neill Clothing working with the marketing team. It might seem like a totally separate story, but I think its important to address how I even got that internship. I was in my Organizational Communication course at APU, when we took a class field trip to Fox Studios in Los Angeles. On that field trip I recognized that FUEL TV was an affiliate of Fox Studios and inquired about what direction I might take in order to get an internship with FUEL TV. After following the process I got an interview and was offered the internship. I was so excited to be a FUEL TV intern, that I told pretty much everybody that I knew about it. A buddy of mine recognized my desire to work in action sports and a few months later offered to connect me with a friend of a friend that worked at O'Neill Clothing as a sales rep. After a phone call to Ted, I was directed to Shaun Moody. I asked for an informational interview, but ended up being offered an internship with the marketing team. Its crazy how far you can go by asking questions. So as I got into the internship I got much more excited to go surf, which is natural when you are surrounded by it all day. About a month into the internship I got a chance to work an event in Santa Monica where I got to work closely with the other interns. I met Jax that weekend, and we ended up talking about working with kids and surfing. I found out she worked at a surf camp and asked if she might inquire about a job for me. A couple weeks later I was working as a surf instructor three days a week, and at O'Neill two days a week. The more I got involved with surfing at the workplace, the more I wanted to be in the water. The internship ended and grad school started, keeping me out of the water a bit. Although it was harder to get out into the surf, I kept working on it and my passion grew. As time went on I got to a point where I really needed a job to survive, and I had to just take whatever I could get. This lead me to apply for a seasonal position at Tilly's. While not my first choice of retail positions, I wanted to do something that would keep me in the industry and give me something marketable to surf companies. During my stint at Tilly's I had moved to Newport Beach, and got myself close enough to the beach that surfing every day became a real option. And it became an activity that helped me keep my sanity with all of the school work and craziness of retail. After nine months at Tilly's, Jax helped me get another job at O'neill Clothing doing retail. It was just three months after starting at O'Neill that I got a text message from Jax suggesting a position I should apply for at Rip Curl. I put in my application, like many others I had put in during that year, a figured at least I should give it a try. A couple weeks went by and I figured they must have gone a different direction. Just when I had given up hope on that position I got a phone call from Jax on her work phone asking if I would like to interview for the position. I was excited to at least get an interview, and decided that now fate was in my hands. I went into the interview as prepared as I could be and felt like it went well, but it was a couple more weeks before I got the call with the good news. And once I did, my one long year in retail was finally over. So I finally felt like things were going my way. I had finished grad school just as I started working for Rip Curl, and life was good. Here we are about 9 months later and I am happy to report that the job is going well and I am in a place where I get to surf every day. It is incredible how life takes you places you would never have thought of. As a high school student in San Jose I would have never believed that I would be working in the surf industry as a career. I know that God has big plans for my life, and that each of these events that have taken place lead me along the path He has set before me. Looking back is sometimes a great exercise for recognizing everywhere God has taken me, and gets me excited to see where my life will take me next. As this chapter of my life in San Clemente begins I look forward to see what it will bring.