I’m sitting at a cafe in New York City, looking out the window. Across the street in a shop, there’s a dude wearing a Zinedine Zidane France soccer jersey. France plays Morocco today in the World Cup. The jersey brings up a lot in me. That was my childhood. Nostalgia is in. Nostalgia’s the best. New York is it. It’s so goddamn weird. The people. The energy. It’s relentless. All walks of life coming together to vibe in the sultry summer rain.

I’ve had a cold for my first couple of days since being back from my sojourn to La La Land. On my first day here, Tuesday, I ordered Thai food to pick up and wandered up to what I thought was the shop, only to find that there was a boutique clothing store where my Thai food should have been. Confused and afraid of looking like a complete tourist wandering the street looking at my phone (why do I care??) I went into the nail salon next door and asked if they knew about this restaurant.

The woman at the front desk came outside and helped me have a look.

Nope, I’d been had.

I consider this and my cold the re-entry tax into this wondrous city. I think I can just leave for two weeks and come back as if nothing’s changed? Naw, you gotta pay your dues, son. Everybody here’s been sweating and battling and I’ve been out west surfing my little heart out.

Well I’m back, bitches, here to restore chaos, shake things up, confuse people by complimenting them as I walk by or smiling when they don’t expect it.

It’s sultry. It’s pretty gnarly. It’s dense. It’s beautiful. I fucking love it. Just being able to walk around for miles and miles again, which means I get to listen to music and sing and dance in the streets—my favorite thing.

There’s music in it all.

I’ll spend my whole life roamin
dancin
singin
writing poetry to understand
no questions ever answered
maybe the hole will never be filled
still
a life well lived
‘cause it was full of music.

I had an epic trip home, as this is the most into surfing I’ve probably ever been in my life, inspired by professional surfer Sterling Spencer and his podcast Pinch My Salt. It’s funny that I’m getting really into it while living in New York, but I also think it’s perfect timing.

I spent my entire childhood hating surfing, as my brother was a nationally ranked junior surfer and I was the moody little brother dragged to his contests on weekends. But in those dark and early mornings down the coast in San Clemente or up in Santa Cruz, I learned the corelord ways.

Now, as I continue to cultivate my athletic background and sink my teeth into the personal training world, I pine to stay connected to what it means to be a kid, just playing. And I guess for me, whether I liked it or not, being a kid meant surfing.

It’s the best, man. My trip home just made me feel like a kid. I surfed pretty much every day and could feel myself getting better with every session.

LA—as much as I love to hate you, I love you. I ran a lot through the city, got in the ocean every day, and just lived outside in the sunshine with my best friends.

Now that I’m back in NYC, it’s frustrating that I’m sick ‘cause I just wanna hit the ground running. I’m trying to get my shit going as a personal trainer, and I wanna be in the gym getting after it. But I think I got a cold because the universe is telling me to slow down.

Take it easy, lad. You’re floating on an infinitesimal particle of dust through absolute nothingness—just enjoy where you’re at!

Often the hardest thing to do is just let time pass, when that’s really all that’s needed.

God, it feels good to sit here and write. To put the things I think and feel into something resembling a story. Life is fun. Last night I sat in Thompson Square Park under a tree journaling, and there was a girl across the park under a different tree journaling, and the sunlight was hitting her in a beautiful way. I was thinking about social media versus real life. How it feels like I need to feed the online machine, because I want to or because I think I need to, I just don’t know.

But what about the reality machine? So I went up and said to her, looks like we had the same idea, journaling under a tree! It was a little awkward, but it got the conversation started.

Life is for living. And that’s doing what makes your palms sweat. She was receptive and we talked for a bit, and then I went back to my tree. That’s all it had to be. I had ants all over me, and I was thinking about ants—what the hell are ants! Are they even real, or are they the physical manifestation of the little things that get to us in life that are so small we can’t even see them, yet they get under our skin, cause us anxiety, steal our joy? The little things. Like the ants, you’ve gotta just lettem be.

All this to say—I’m here, I’m home, I’m starting the next phase of my life in NYC, and admittedly I was a little sad at first. Overwhelmed is probably the better word, and maybe that’s why I got sick. It was a long travel day after the three-hour delay cause of a storm out east, and I got to my apartment at like 2 a.m. after a couple of much-needed slices of pizza pie.

There was so much that I felt like I had to do immediately. Some of my plants had died too since I was gone, and that made me glum.

But as my brother Mo said when I was back in LA—keep the stoke alive! I always get a little blue when traveling from place to place, when such a meaningful week, or two, or a month, or three years becomes a memory. It’s okay to feel that way. I don’t wanna fight it.

But I can also carry the stoke I felt over into whatever’s next.

Keep that stoke alive, through sickness and through health, no matter what. I’ll say it again. We’re floating on a speck of dust through a wilderness of emptiness. So I’ll let life slap me around a little with a smile. It all means nothing. Keep the stoke alive.

And finally, some words on home:

I love you Malibu
You don’t know how you heal me
Sometimes it’s hard to come home
Because it’s hard to leave
Coming home
Makes me feel like a kid again
Thanks for holding me in your
Nourishing twilight
Even though I gotta fly
You help me remember who I am
Because of that
I may continue to explore
Taking with me
The salt in the waves