Profundity

Long school days leave me exhausted with not much left at the end of the day. All I want to do is listen to some music or veg out on the couch, it makes it difficult to get school things done in the evening.

In other news, yesterday, I went surfing with a friend in a new spot here in Santa Cruz and I was surprised to find a much kinder, less-competitive crowd at this spot. I had a good time even though the good waves were few and far between.

Something that had bothered me about Santa Cruz over the last year has been the intensity of some Santa Cruz people, but specifically Santa Cruz surfers. There are a number of surf spots in town in which older surfers will heckle inexperienced surfers, put them down and even attempt to fight in the water. It was one of the biggest surprises i found moving here.

I always thought that surfers were generally a chilled out, mellow balanced group of people, but I've found that the contrary is true here at the popular spots. People are intense, competitive and generally mean. I don't know where this mean-ness comes from but I suspect part of it is a phenomenon that comes from growing up in the shadow of a tourist community, where people come and go all the time.

I see this same strange intensity in some of my students and I've brushed it off as normal teen angst, but I think that there may be something more, some hidden piece of aggression that comes from living in a place like this.

I'm always trying to find them out a little more, and I'm sick of surfers raining on my parade.