Ninety-Seven Percent Sure

What percentage of your identity is wrapped up in your job? 

What about your passion or hobby? 

Now add the two together. No math required if they're one and the same. 

I'll go first, 97.5%.

Pushing mid-life crisis, starting to wonder if that number is healthy. Something about that self-appointed 'skateboarder' title is hard to shake. 

You don't see the basketball player from high-school identifying themselves twenty years later by their sport or the drama kids claiming actors even though they've never professionally acted a gig in their life.

Yet here we are, 97.5% 'skateboarder,' wondering why we hold the identity so dear. 

Every awkward, small talk conversation slowly stumbles to the inevitable, "What do you do?" 

Working in skateboarding, I can comfortably slide in my identity without a tangent, but even when I wasn't, I found myself holding back outbursts, "Well, I work at this weird snack food company, but really I'm a skateboarder, that's me, that's what I really 'do.' "

Not that you asked, or is it relevant to this conversation. But if you're curious about this identity I developed in my teenage years, yes, I'm still desperately holding onto it. What about you? Do you play with any toys that occupy the core of your being? Still wearing that alternative band t-shirt from high school? Cool, me too.

In the years when skateboarding was all; family, friends, relationships came second and would be lost if they got in the way. The window was small, clear, and quickly closing, but it felt important. 

Now looking through a bigger, messier window, the importance has waned. It hurts to say it, but skateboarding's not the most important thing in life. Makes you feel like a traitor even uttering the words, like you're slowly losing yourself. But if it came before my wife and kid, I'd have much bigger problems than an identity crisis. 

With each passing year, the identity feels more ridiculous to hold on to but even harder to let go. 

And who's it for? The strangers we meet, or convincing ourselves that we're different than every other suburban dad fumbling through this stage of life, facing the reality that things have changed.

At some point, it comes down to a need more than a want. You can see it in Grosso's teary eyes when he says it, after having skateboarding as part of us for so long, we become dependent, we figured out life with it; without our wooden crutch, the darkness comes in quick.

An outlet, coping mechanism, Peter Pan syndrome, whatever you want to call it, if you're still in it, you've got it pretty bad. 

One day you'll have to face it. Who am I without it?

Pass, next question.