Emily Bett Rickards Instagram – A few years ago I found myself burnt out, aggravated and weighed down by an invisible 1000kilo cloud. I was uninspired, stagnant, stuck and that was just the appetizer. I couldn’t compute the gargantuan incapacity I had acquired to even just be a human being. Tired of my own bullshit, I took a break from everything — work, phone, friends, all of the internet, travel (keep in mind this was before COVID) and spent all my time starring at the ocean. Wave after wave after wave. Months went by in a catatonic blur until a tsunami crashed, demanding I get up off my ass and do something new. The “something new” had two rules: 1- I had to have NO reason to try it other than my oceanic boss telling me to do so And 2- it had to be something I was going to be really f****** bad at. Which to me sounded really f****** gruesome. Scared shitless I dove into a wide range of things from motorcycling to pottery to knots to stand up comedy. Rock climbing, cooking, sewing, painting, chopping, back packing, French, etymology, ukulele and my favourite of them all, surfing. I still wouldn’t call myself a surfer. I resemble more a land seal on a baguette but somewhere in the salt water rinse, the freezing cold of the Pacific and the washing machine cycle of a botched wave I didn’t feel so Je ne sais nah anymore. Since then I’ve caught a party wave with my seal sisters, bruised my tongue, and eaten the shores of California, Oregon and Vancouver Island. Not all the skills have stuck but as I tackle new ones I’m always reminded that discomfort leads to the best transformations and that enthusiasm is contagious! Please share with me your scared shitless stories – let’s tackle them together! Skills for near future: sign language, sailing, pole dancing, piloting…