One day I’ll be able to snowboard all day, every day.
One day I’m going to have finished building an awesome snowboard focused company that not only helps others snowboard, but also gives me the freedom to snowboard as much as I want.
However, that day where I’ve achieved this goal hasn’t arrived yet.
In the meantime, there’s work to be done. My job may be different, but I’m sure the basic rules of my life aren’t that different from many of you. It’s a careful balance between our love for snowboarding and working.
Bills have to be paid, family has to be taken care of and it’s nice to be able to eat out once in awhile, but you still want to be able to get your snowboarding time in right?
How I balance snowboarding and work
Unless we’re lucky enough to win the lottery, work is required to buy time to snowboard. That’s just how it is, even if you’re at a job you love.
I used to get over 200+ days per year on snow, which may seem like an almost limitless amount of snowboarding, but if you have a big goal in life then work still has to happen at some point, even if it means working from 4 pm to midnight after the slopes are shut.
The way I balance work and snowboarding is fairly simple, but it does provide me with more time to snowboard than the average person:
1) Hard work buys more snowboard time sooner
Let’s say it’ll take you 5 years of hard work to get to that dream goal of being able to snowboard as much as you want. The harder you work now, the sooner you reach that goal.
Now let’s say you snowboard a lot, but you also slack off and don’t do any work when you’re not snowboarding. That may work for awhile, but you’re not going to get closer to that awesome life of snowboarding all day, every day.
Now for some, living paycheck to paycheck is totally fine and there are plenty of snowboard bums who do this for many years, but for me I like to have big dreams.
I like to have my cake and eat it too. I don’t see why we can’t snowboard a lot AND work hard towards a big life goal at the same time. It’s not easy, but if you have a dream and something you love to do, I believe you can do both.
It does mean some small sacrifices along the way. Maybe you don’t get to watch as much CSI:Miami and maybe you have to cut back on watching cat videos on Youtube, but I think the reward is pretty dam awesome.
Don’t just coast. Work hard so you can have your cake and eat it too.
2) Hard work makes play time much more sweet
Let’s be clear about this, I love my work. I love the fact that my job involves building cool snowboard related training tools and writing about snowboarding.
However, that’s not to say it’s always easy and that there aren’t times when it can be frustrating. There are plenty of days when I run into wrenches in my projects.
I’ve had days where I worked on writing and recording snowboard training content for our upcoming courses, then had to scrap the whole thing because I realized that I missed an important part.
I’m sure we’ve all had those days at work when things go wrong. However, those days make the fun times so much sweeter.
When you can sit back on a job well done and know that you’ve worked hard to get one step closer to your ultimate dream goal, it’s an awesome feeling. It’s like knowing you not only get to snowboard now, but that you really earned it.
Snowboarding kind of becomes like a happy place where you recharge. Even if you love your work, you need to have time off to recharge and revive those creative juices.
You guys all know that feeling. We all had it in highschool when we studied for that tough exam and managed to pass and ahead of us was an epic summer holiday. It’s that same feeling.
At the end of the day I think it’s pretty simple to balance the things you love (like snowboarding) and work.
Aim high, but work hard and always enjoy the things you love along the way.
- Jed
|
 |
