I was listening to the waves, the soundtrack to a previous life, staring at the ocean as the last rays of sunlight faded below the Pacific, sitting in the living room of two wonderful friends I love, and it was nostalgia that hit me first.

It was swift and strong and, upon fading, left in its wake an overwhelming sense of appreciation.

Appreciation for the sport of beach volleyball. Where it has taken me. Where has led me. What it’s gifted me.

I felt compelled to write something, to those still doing it, to the ones still playing in those qualifiers, to the road dogs still punching those passports, to those with the courage to continue surfing the highs and lows, doing your best to simply stay on your feet to ride one more, and maybe one more after that.

I felt compelled – always have, and probably always will – to reach out to my friends who qualified in Huntington Beach on Thursday afternoon. There are few better feelings than making it through a qualifier. It belongs in a space reserved for getting engaged or watching your child take their first steps.

I mean that.

I mean it because I can recall, with a crystalline clarity the night I made my first main draw. I remember the way Raffe Paulis jumped up and down, yelling “TRAVIS TRAVIS TRAVIS!” I remember him leaping into my arms. I remember Casey Patterson commenting on the video of it, noting how stoked Raffe was not for himself, but for me. I remember needing a moment to myself, walking off the court, hands on my hips, smiling in disbelief – a moment captured by LJ Luciano, one of the last people at Krieg Field that evening. I remember piling into a white SUV, four people crammed into the back row.

I remember meeting my wife, smushed up against me, and the first words I ever said to Delaney Knudsen: “I’m sorry I smell so bad.”

I remember the words she said back: “You smell like victory.”

I remember sitting at the bar that night, between DR Vander Meer and Troy Field, cheersing celebratory beers. I remember not sleeping. I remember what I journaled the next morning, sitting up on my hotel bed: “We did it! We did it! We fucking did it! We made a main draw!”

I remember all these things because that’s what the brain does when it recognizes a moment of significance has happened. It catalogs. Records every detail.

Remembers.

Stays so radically present that nothing else exists. There is no future to attend, no past on which to commiserate, just the wonderful, beautiful present.

How many moments exist like that for you?

How many can come from a typical job, the type beach volleyball players – mostly poor and raggedy, a step or 10 behind where we’re told we should be – are so often encouraged to take?

Not many.

By conventional standards, I should have been further along in my journalism career then, perhaps on a full-time college beat, maybe even covering professionals. I wasn’t. I felt a pull to this sport. Can’t really explain it in any material way. Just did.

I was in the arena, as alive as I’d ever felt.

It always saddens me, when people ask what sports I want Austin — named, if you can connect the dots, to the city I first qualified, the night met my wife — to play, and they add “definitely not volleyball, right? No money in it.”

I don’t know.

This sport has given me a life that has surpassed anything I could have imagined. Fulfillment. Purpose. Adventures. Incredible friends. A beautiful family. Isn’t that what money is supposed to buy, after all?

Is that not what we have when we’re playing beach volleyball? When we’re doing daily what most spend no nominal amount of money on when they’re on vacation?

So it wasn’t longing that I felt Thursday night, a wishing I was there, just a fond remembrance.

A love, I suppose is the word, for those still doing it.