Learning to surf taught me a lot about myself at a very critical point in my life. Graduating college is scary. You wonder if life will be too hard or if your goals will go un-reached. If you're me, you worry that the second you find your first job, you will never find time for fun again.

Pipe Dreams
I spent my life with a dream of being that sun kissed, salty haired, surfer girl. And for about 20 years, that's all that it was. I called it a pipe dream because it was funny, but more importantly, because I never thought it would actually happen. And then one day, with a push my from my older brother, I tried it. I got a teacher, I rented a board, and I dove head first into what seemed like such an unattainable goal. That's when I realized lesson number one.

The difference between a dream and a pipe dream is your belief that it can come true. I spent two decades telling myself that one day I would fly to California and then I would be able to do what I wanted to do. I had never considered that I could turn my beloved Long Island beaches into my very own playground. Once I had learned that the only thing stopping me all this time was myself, I began to wonder what other facets of my life I had put a self-block on, and I began pursuing my dreams.

The Surf Report
I must have spent more time studying this thing in a week than I did in my entire four years of college. It will tell you every aspect of the conditions, but it is constantly changing. Here, I learned that you can always find time to do what you love. For me, this meant checking the report at midnight. If the next morning looked good, I was waking up at 5 am to get to the beach for a salty sunrise. And by 9:30, I was in the car getting ready to race to work. There is a balance between work and play, and when it is found that is when you will find true happiness.

The Impact Zone
This spot is where the waves break most often and aggressively. If you want to reach the surf, you need to breach the impact zone first. Here, you can get pounded and thrashed, relentlessly, for what feels like an hour, if you pick the right day. The easy way to handle this is to see the challenge ahead, decide that it's too hard, and call it a day. But anybody who has caught a monster wave knows that when you reach the impact zone, you tuck your head down and you paddle right through it. This taught me the reward of hard work. Nothing worth having comes easy. If you want a big wave, you need to take a beating and come out stronger. The ocean is one of mother nature's most powerful forces. If we can wrangle it, even if only for a moment, who is to say we can't do that anywhere else too. When life presents you with a challenge, you paddle hard. When you see that challenge starting to win, you paddle harder.

The Ride
This is essentially why we do what we do. When you drop in on the perfect wave, you no longer feel the haziness of dawn patrol, or the fatigue from the paddle out. You feel the calm in an ocean that had felt so unstoppable just five minutes before. This is the ride; all of your hard work coming to fruition in a single moment. It makes you thankful for the journey that led you there. So don't rush it. People spend their lives racing to reach their next destination, only to realize they missed out on their previous one. Take every impact zone with gratitude for what it will bring and most importantly, enjoy the ride.