Do I miss it?
Such was the inevitable question when I returned to California for the first time since moving to Tallahassee, Florida, five months ago.
Of course I miss it.
I miss the ocean.
Miss driving up the top of the off Pier Ave and having my breath taken away by the sight of it. Miss the sound of it. The smell of it. Miss having it as my front yard. Miss standing on the shore and just staring at it, getting lost in the deep blue.
I miss afternoons at Tri Bourne’s house.
Miss podcasting with him once or twice a week. Miss the afternoon routine of walking over to say hi to him and Gabby. Miss the occasional barbecue, grilling up picanha and brats and chicken and whatever else as friends pop in and out.
I miss sitting on the strand, accidentally running into nearly all of my good friends in the span of an hour, as I did on my first morning in town, playing no-jump with Jon Mesko and Evan Cory and Kyle Friend — and running into my sister-in-law, Heather Friend, Kahlee York, Savvy Simo, and Peter Partain, among others, all on pure chance.
I miss the endorphin dump of playing beach volleyball for playing’s sake, as I did with Nick Lucena and Canyon Ceman and a wonderful group of men who played fours and drank beers and talked trash. I left that day on a high I hadn’t felt since playing the Hermosa Open with Andy Benesh in September.
I miss that and so much more about my old life in the South Bay.
But I miss it in the way you miss, say, something from your childhood, the memories wrapped in a warm layer of nostalgia, a knowing that there is no going back to that life.
Even if you could, you wouldn’t.
Because there is more to life now. What made my California chapter of life so stupidly God-blessed was because it was timed perfectly with the responsibilities, or lack thereof, I had. In California, I had the freedom and autonomy to do what I wanted, when I wanted. Write? Podcast? Play? Commentate?
Do it. Don’t do it.
The choice is yours, so long as the rent’s paid and there’s some extra change for food and good coffee.
It was a rollicking season of freedom without much to be accountable for, not unlike childhood. I did a decent job during those years of understanding just how blessed I was, to be living the life I was. Every day, I’d close my journal entry with “Keep living this blessed, blessed life.”
I knew I was in the Good Ole Days while I was in them.
Yet I wouldn’t go back if I could, because those Good Ole Days are just what that: The Good Ole Days.
I am simply in a new set of Good Ole Days.
Going back to California was like putting on clothes fresh out of the dryer — so warm, so cozy, so lovely, but temporary.
The life I lived then is dead and gone, a skin I have shed. I’m a father now to a toddler and an infant. The constant traveling, the financial skimming-by, the spontaneous nature of my mid-20s and early-30s would no longer fill my cup as it once did; in fact, it would do just the opposite. Living as I did then would cut into what is becoming my most precious metric in life: Time with my family.
When Delaney became pregnant with our daughter, I knew I’d have to begin seeking a more financially stable lifestyle, one with both regularity in its schedule and its dependability as a provider. A few weeks later, Nick Lucena and Brooke Niles literally appeared in my life, at a happenstance meeting at the Hermosa Pier (again, one of the things I miss about Hermosa is those daily happenstance meetings). They needed a coach at Florida State; I had just started coaching, would I want to take the next step?
Oh, how did I.
Tallahassee has since become as perfect for this phase of our lives as Hermosa Beach was to the last. There will come a day where I feel as nostalgic and warm about Tallahassee as I currently do California, but, if all goes as planned, that won’t be for some time.
For now, I’m in a different phase, knowing full-well I’m still firmly in a place that 10 years from now I’ll view as The Good Ole Days — the same, but different.
