Free Refills

So I thought I had ideas for a couple of simple pieces that I could publish yesterday and today, but the zero drafting revealed that my initial conception was misguided, and the pieces weren’t going to be simple at all. But then what was I supposed to publish? Trying to force a piece when the zero drafts say, “Hey, there’s a lot more here than you initially considered,” creates struggle, demands that the zero draft be something besides a zero draft (namely a first draft, which is different), and creates time pressure that I really hate.

It’s now clear that if I’m going to allow–much less actually invite–more expansive pieces to come into creation, then my current approach to publishing is getting in the way.

Earlier today, I sat down to write a couple of follow-up pieces to the writings I did last week about my experiences with the snowboard certification process. In the first piece, I wanted to talk more about the assertion I made in last Wednesday’s piece, that part of the reason the process was more fun this time around was that I was bringing a very different energy to the experience. In the second piece, I wanted to follow up on what I wrote Thursday and Friday, that a substantial reason that the whole group found the experience so demoralizing is that the process itself has struggle built into it.

The first piece seemed simple, maybe three paragraphs at the most. The second seemed a little but not much more involved. I thought I could zero-draft both of them in a short period and quickly get them into revisions and then published.

I’m now 2,200 words into zero-drafting around these ideas, and I’m not quite done with exploring the first, and I’m just starting to really touch on the second.

I notice this: that the conception of the piece and what the piece really wants to be are two different things. Trusting the zero draft means sitting with the process and allowing the second to reveal itself, irrespective of any initial conceptualization.

Intellectually, I was pretty sure no one would fail–PSIA/AASI try pretty hard to pass people on level-one certifications, so that newer instructors buy in to the organization (and also pay yearly dues and sign up for further certifications/Continuing Education hours, which is how the organization makes money). But I don’t think any of the nine of us taking the certification test was truly confident we’d passed all the riding tasks. (Me? My flatspins were ragged, and I can barely nose press at all.) You get no positive feedback at all during the exam. Nine out of nine people felt demoralized by the end of the three days.

Is it foolish to expect otherwise? After all, no one leaves the bar exam feeling high on life. None of the medical professionals I know described their board exams as joyful experiences. Maybe ending up feeling deeply beat up is just part and parcel of the exam process.

But we’re talking about snowboarding here. We participate in the sport because it brings us joy, and it’s no exaggeration to say that people choose to become instructors in substantial part in order to share that joy. I don’t think I object to the idea that instructors should perform to certain standards, but I question whether this is the way to attain those standards.

It only gets worse as you try to progress. While pass rates for the level one are in the nineties, pass rates for level two hover around thirty-to-thirty-five percent, and the level three (“Full Cert”) falls all the way to ten percent.

(The pass rates are remarkably consistent year to year, by the way, which suggests–despite strong denial by PSIA/AASI to the contrary–that there is something of a quota. But consider: if it were otherwise, wouldn’t people go back to the training departments at their home resorts and debrief on why they failed, allowing training to improve for the next group?)

We would never take our students into terrain that only a third of them could handle. We’d rightly decry that as setting them up to fail. So it strikes me as deeply misguided to do it to instructors.

Here’s why this all matters: in our culture, we already attach struggle to so much of what we do. We expect things to be hard, and they end up being hard. But to cultivate a culture of struggle and hardship within an activity meant to be joyful should alarm us. I’ve now devoted my life to exploring and teaching a process that promises that life doesn’t need to be a struggle. I’m not saying that it isn’t challenging to change our old habits, but we truly can learn to live within a state of ease. To then participate in a process that brings struggle to one of the parts of life where struggle should least be present raises my hackles.

PSIA/AASI has no incentive to change–people keep signing up for the exams, so the money keeps flowing in. But I know we can do better. For me, the question becomes, How much energy do I want to put in in order to bring about that change?

(Demoralized or no, there was something of a happy ending: all nine of us passed. Congrats to Eddie, Jade, J., Rachel, Ryan, Sara, Savannah and Sofia.)

The third day of the certification test was the day in which they tested us on our riding. They tested us on carved, skidded, and switch turns. We were asked to perform flatspin 360s and ollies and board presses. We rode both groomers and bumps, and explored basic moves in the jumps, jib park and half-pipe. The examiners watched us, critiqued us verbally, and wrote our scores in a little notebook.

At the end of the day, when they released us to go tally up the scores and write feedback, two of the nine of us taking the test declared themselves totally done with the experience and immediately took off their snowboards; the other six and I took a lap to shake off the emotional residue of the day. “I just want to take a run without being made to feel that I suck at snowboarding,” said one of the women. Everyone nodded in assent.

So: over the course of three days of certification, nine out of nine people felt worse than when they started, felt less confident about their abilities, felt drained of joy. Keep in mind that we’re talking about snowboarding, about a group of people seeking to improve as riders and instructors. I assert there’s a problem with this process.

Yesterday was the day in the certification test in which they taught us about how they want us to teach, and it was a lot of words, and that meant a lot of sitting on the snow in the Breckenfridge cold and wind, and the main fun was making fun of the not-fun way the ski side of the organization does things, but honestly, this was pretty comparable.

I still had some fun, though, which might suggest that part of what I’m finding different about the experience might in fact be a difference in me.

I’m taking another snowsports certification test this week. If you’ve been hanging around Free Refills for a while, you might have read about my alpine cert and my children’s specialist cert experiences, and recall that I found the process irritating and the value of what I learned questionable. I also wrote about the essential injustice built into the system–that instructors who are true pros and devote themselves to the craft can, with a tremendous amount of work, get to a point in which they can barely, just barely, scrape by.

This week, I’m taking my level-one snowboarding certification, and I’m finding the experience substantially different. The primary difference: how much more fun the experience has been thus far.

Part of that is the different quality of the examiners I’ve worked with. For my ski certification two years ago, my entire group of eight instructors grew to absolutely loathe the examiner we worked with and her endless, tedious explanations. By contrast, my examiner this week keeps his explanations light and well paced. Some of this is just the difference between the two people. But some of it is the difference between skiing and snowboarding cultures.

This cultural difference is actually kind of interesting, because the organizations in question, the Professional Ski Instructors of America and the American Association of Snowboard Instructors, are in fact sister organizations–the AASI approach to teaching grew directly out of the PSIA approach. Though they teach in very similar ways, there’s a vast difference in the models they apply to what high-level performance in their respective fields should look like. The ultimate expression of skiing, according to the PSIA, is racing. We are taught to model our techniques after ski racers, and to teach accordingly. That approach does lead to beautiful, efficient turns. But to understand that that model might be misapplied to the recreational skier looking to have fun, consider this: ski racing is a competitive, athletic approach to the sport in which everyone races the same course, leaving very little room for self-expression.

But according to the AASI, the ultimate expression of snowboarding is maximum self-expression. It assumes freestyle skills–that you will spin and jump and explore–but doesn’t assume that the perfect expression of snowboarding is Shaun White. If you want to be a park rat, that’s an option. If you want to carve smooth arcs on the groomers, that’s an option. If you want to shred the bumps and steeps, or fly through the powder, these too are options for you.

There’s vastly more play in the AASI approach, and it has shown thus far in the experience of the test.

If the drafting is any indication, I am working on a major piece about struggle, and about releasing struggle. I’m not struggling with the piece, I’m happy to say, but it turns out that a major piece doesn’t go from the zero drafts I started Saturday morning to a finished piece/set of pieces in just two days. But here’s a taste of what’s to come.

In last Friday’s piece, I said that I was struggling mightily. And I was.

And then, later that night, for a variety of reasons which are turning out to not be simple to write about, that struggle pretty much fell away.

As the weekend progressed, I found a different type of flow than I had experienced perhaps ever, and that flow manifested in many ways, but one especially fun way was as the best bump skiing I have ever done. I really like bumps, you need to understand. I practice them a lot. This was a major breakthrough.

Some fresh snow had made the bumps nice and soft and inviting, but the breakthrough came because this new flow helped me see the problem of bump skiing from a new perspective. I recognized that I was playing out old emotional patterns in my day-to-day life that came from a world I no longer inhabit nor need to inhabit, but hadn’t yet realized I could literally just practice letting go of. And that change in perspective led to some new understanding about the issues in my skiing, which led to some experimentation (which might be better described as play), which led to some, let’s just be honest, straight up shredding in the bumps, like seriously three or four levels better than I had ever skied bumps before, which was so thrilling and joyful that I literally found myself laughing out loud.

I have been struggling mightily recently.

Regarding my writing, I’m sure that’s been evident enough to anyone who has read the pieces from the last couple of days. Shit, it took me seven drafts to put up Tuesday’s mediocre piece about my work forking into four different projects. How deep was that struggle? I decided to write that piece not just because it was true and felt important, but also because I thought it would be simple to write, and thus a welcome respite from all the, yes, struggle. But for some reason, it wasn’t simple at all.

Unfortunately, struggling in my writing is probably the smallest piece of struggle I’m dealing with. My move toward the kind of work I believe myself called to do has stalled completely. I thought I’d find some forward momentum when ski season rolled around and I began to teach again. To my dismay, that hasn’t been the case at all.

I feel like a fucking fraud. And you know what? I’m really fucking bored of that feeling. But boredom doesn’t seem to be enough to make it go away. I guess the feeling, or whatever’s triggering it, has something to teach me.

In the zero draft for this piece, I began to write, “I’ve been down this road so many times.” But then I caught myself. “But … have I?” I said. “Maybe I’ve only stood on this road again and again. Maybe I’ve only ever walked in circles.”

If that’s the case, then it’s time to actually follow where it leads.