Leaving SoCal + Other Reflections

I’m Moving. Again.

Dude. I’m moving again. Again. Oof. For someone who just desperately wants to find a place to settle down and call home, I can’t seem to stop bopping around. Honestly though, this is the funniest possible outcome. I’m just going for a second loop through California I guess. I joked about this when I moved out here in 2020, but I guess I’m actually doing it. Back story: Right after college, I moved to Huntington Beach and I eventually started skydiving at Elsinore in 2014. After that, I moved up to SF for a few years, then on to Colorado. So when I moved back out to SoCal from Colorado, I joked that I was just starting the loop again. Well, the joke is on me. Here I am, moving back to NorCal again. If I complete the cycle and go back to Colorado, I will just keel over with the ridiculousness of it all. If only I could just find a place to kick it for more than a handful of years, that would sure be excellent.

I’m excited to move! I’m excited to be a Skydive California homie and jump there regularly. I’m excited to get into paragliding there with some friends. I’m excited to move in with my honey and get to do 2way jams with him a lot <3. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even get my pilot’s license up there.

Am I ready to Leave? A Little Ready

I’m both plenty ready, and yet, only a little ready. As far as skydiving opportunities, I’m most sad to be leaving the LO slot that I only recently got at Skydive Elsinore. I started freefly LOing there in January (after waiting many, many months to be approved) and I simply love it. I love everything about LOing. The people that want to fly with me are so enthusiastic. I just love sharing in their success. I love planning jumps and watching people improve and having fun. I love LOing; I’m sad there isn’t really a need for it at Skydive California. Hopefully I’ll be able to come back and guest LO at Elsinore still some times. Honestly, I think one of the things I’m most hesitant to leave with this move is load organizing at Skydive Elsinore.

I’m also super sad to be leaving the Oceanside tunnel. It is the gold standard of tunnels, in my opinion. I love the staff. I love how it’s run. I love that they do so much to build up the community of experienced flyers there. It has the feel of a dropzone. In addition to the culture, the amount of skilled flyers that are always down for VFS or sequentials or what-have-you is amazing. I’m going to miss being 10 minutes away from a world class tunnel, with world class staff, full of so many of my friends that are badass flyers. When I compare it to what tunnels I’ll be flying at in NorCal (SF Bay: 12′ octagon from the stone ages or Sacramento: underpowered 14′, both an hour from my new place), I weep.

But Also, Plenty Ready

Southern California wasn’t what I expected. Honestly, I had been thinking about this move for years, since probably 2018. Originally, I assumed I would move out to SoCal to fly on some hellishly competitive belly teams. I assumed I’d get onto the Perris LO schedule for belly. From all my competition belly, I already had so many tummy flyer friends out here; I envisioned my move out here being one where I would just spend more time with them. Especially, I expected to spend a ton of time with my best friend at the time, Kellie Infante. That was the original plan.

However, things changed. I got into freeflying. I moved away from competition belly for a few seasons, to focus on freeflying. My friend Kellie passed away. Covid hit. The original plan changed.

By the time I arrived out here, I could only sort of fly on my head and I knew almost no freeflyers. I felt essentially trapped in my new house in San Diego because, well, Covid. I felt really lost in skydiving. But if you want to get into bigway freeflying, SoCal isn’t a bad place to be. I dove into that discipline because I had no idea what else to do. Normally, I would have put together a team. But freeflyers just don’t love teams the way belly flyers do. And I didn’t really have the skills to entice anyone else into a VFS or MFS team with me. So, I floundered, but eventually found my footing, channeling my energy into getting an invite to Project 19 and the VWR. But was it the roaring success of a move I expected it to be originally? Nawp. Not really.

What about the People?

Well, honestly, this is another area I let myself down. I do have a lot of friends here; I had a lot of them before I even moved out here. My connections to the Perris and Elsinore belly communities were very strong, due to competing on Perris-based teams and Nationals, etc. However, since I’ve been here, I’ve hardly done a thing to nurture them. I wanted to focus on getting better at freeflying so badly that I’ve neglected my other friendships, and that makes me sad. (So I guess my answer to this predicament is moving farther away and hoping that improves it? I never said I was logical about things…)

I never managed to quite connect with the freefly community here the way I really hoped either. Does that totally surprise me? Not in the least. First, trying to lump all of SoCal freeflyers into one bucket is silly. There are so many freeflyers here, with so many different skill levels, that are in varying stages of engagement with the sport. They all have different dropzones they frequent. Most of them already have a crew. It was naive of me to expect to ever really be able to join that. Second, I’m not surprised because I know my tendency to be a try-hard is off-putting to freeflyers. I can’t help it. I work really hard to be good at things. But in the land of California-cool, looking like you’re making an effort is notable, in a bad way. I think I’m still too much of belly flyer at heart to have ever really gotten in with the cool kids. Such is life.

But! I have made some really good friends here and I will miss them dearly. I do love that SoCal draws in people from everywhere, for it’s skydiving-mecca qualities. It means there’s always an influx of people to get to know. In the two-ish years I’ve been back, I have made so many friends. I’ll have a guest room up in NorCal, come visit! Or let’s plan a skydiving trip together! Or let me come crash on your couch and I’ll come back and visit!

So Is It Time?

Idk, man. Is it time to move? I guess so. Every time I relocate, I feel like I’m being scattered to the wind again. As someone who spent most of their life in one place, with familial roots so firmly entrenched in the midwest for generations, I appreciate a place to call home. I haven’t really had that as an adult. But, I guess SoCal this time was never going to be home. First, it was going to be a temporary springboard for belly progress, but then became my springboard for freefly bigways. So I suppose it’s time. I’ve gotten onto the 200way and P19, now I just need to deliver. I don’t need the SoCal springboard for that anymore.s

Other Reflections, Re: Phones and Bigways

I am really mad at myself right now. Why? Because I can’t seem to stand up for my opinions, even on my own damn blog. This is my own tiny corner of the internet where I share the things in my brain. Yet, I can’t even actually say what I want without wilting when someone disagrees. How did I become this person? Yuck.

I had a number of people comment about my post where I talk about playing phone games or reading on the ride to altitude; a lot of peoples’ hackles raised when they read it. I got a some of comments saying, “Well it works for me”, “It relaxes me”, etc. Many of the people commenting fly way, way better than me. They probably have already achieved more in skydiving than I ever will. They are currently probably better at skydiving than I’ll ever be. So, I followed my gut-reaction to shrink away from my own opinion and concede. I simply rolled over and agreed. And in retrospect, that’s not what I believe. So, I’m really mad at myself that I can’t just say, “Look. I think phones on planes draw attention away from what we’re trying to achieve.” Because that’s truly what I think. Maybe people DO succeed because they use their phone. But I believe people succeed in spite of it.

Will I ever tell people to get off their phones? No. Will I even be judgy about it? No. People should do whatever they want to; who am I to give them advice? But I think what I think; this blog is my little place where I get to express that.

And because this is my own blog, I think I’ll get out my shovel and just keep digging this hole for myself.

Listen. I pride myself on my mental game. Honestly, I believe it’s what has gotten me as far as I’ve gone, as quickly as I’ve gone. Am I a prodigy who should be lauded for how quickly they learn? No. I am not that good. But I’m alright. (I sometimes question whether I’m actually good at skydiving. Then I talk to one or another of my mentors and remember that I AM actually decent at this.) I pride myself on the progress I’ve made in both belly and freeflying. I believe my mental game plays a huge part in my improvement and how I execute under pressure. My success comes from learning how to keep tabs on my brain, and then coaxing it into doing what I want. Am I nervous? Calm the brain. Am I amped? Slow it down. Am I sluggish? Speed up my brain.

I’ve come to rely on the mental practice from meditation of Noting: Noting when a thought enters your consciousness and choosing to engage or not, Noting when a feeling occurs and getting curious about it. I use this technique on the plane ride, the entire ride if I can. I have thoughts with self-doubt or day dreams of snacks or judgements of myself or others on the previous skydive. But I note these things as thoughts and I choose not to engage. When I experience sensations, good and bad, I note them and get curious, instead of being washed away with them. Does my butt hurt from sitting in this position? Does my neck have a crick in it? Is it super hot? Super cold? I handle all that with a noting practice. I worked really hard to get good at meditating over the last few years and I advocate for it; I think it’s better to experience the moment than to distract myself from the moment when I need to perform on a skydive.

(Side Note: I also believe my ability to reign in my brain is why I can sleep at the drop of a hat. Seriously, give me approximately two minutes and I can be asleep. I’ve trained myself to just put it all out of my head and do the thing I need to do, in this case sleep.)

Having this debate about phones makes me realize that people may not understand the sheer amount of mental work I put into the sport. That’s fine. (Ugh. I perceive exactly how high and mighty I sound while writing this, but I just can’t bother to decorate my opinions with more palatable frosting right now because it’s late when I’m writing this.) But, I put in so much mental work. Sometimes, when people debate this with me, it almost feels like me and my hard work in that area are being dismissed, or perhaps not acknowledged. That sucks.

So, sure. Do what do you do on your phone. You are the best person to decide what you need. I will not be doing so, nor will I be judging you. I just wouldn’t advise it. However, I would like to ask: Why does my opinion of phones in planes bother you so much? Why do you feel the need to explain yourself to me or tell me that I’m being too critical, or too harsh, or too judgy or that I’m just plain wrong for believing this? I’m just a freeflyer of middling skill with my first world record invite in hand; who am I to have opinions about this?

Finally, if you’ve made it this far and you’re offended or upset. I am sorry. That’s not my intention. I don’t aim to personally attack. I’m just flinging my thoughts into the void of the internet.