A healthy life is one of variety. Just because you skate at a professional level doesn’t mean that is all you have to offer the world. As injuries and back taxes slowly divert your productivity from skate tricks to other interests, perhaps it is time for a transition.
Not sure what the next act holds?
Well, here’s our stab at giving you a few options in what we’re calling “The Jenkem Guide to Life After Skateboarding.”
There’s something for everyone, so follow along as Semen Sam, our new character we dubbed after our favorite illustrator Giurato sent us these cartoons strongly resembling a jizz man, tries out a few different life paths.
Fisherman
It’s basically the same thing as skateboarding. A lot of standing around outside and talking about spots, what was landed by whom, and the subtle differences in the measurements of your gear. Drink away the day and film yourself trying to catch things. Who needs a large ass heelflip when you can have a largemouth bass. Also, there’s no pressure, because like the end of your skateboarding career fishing mainly consists of coming up empty handed.
Join A Motorcycle Gang
If you find yourself dedicating a lot more time to working on your “hog” than riding a skateboard, perhaps it’s time to fully commit to the MC. The transition should be easy as you’re already exclusively wearing dirty denim vests anyhow and you haven’t trimmed your beard since the days when Thrasher came with free DVDs. Plus, you can finally break out all those old sleeveless Indy graphic t-shirts you had to shelve.
Woodworker
Wonder what could be more fulfilling than a crowd of your peers applauding your hard work at a skate video premiere? Cutting a bunch of wood and then gluing it back together, apparently. You can join the growing lists of skate “legends” who traded in their plywood for… some plywood. Has anybody taken used skateboards and glued them together and then made something with all those colorful plies? That seems like it would be cool.
Alt-Right Conservative
If your skate-follower counts are slowly dwindling, consider embracing the rage-induced engagement of American Right Wing politics. A few tweets about false flags, stolen elections, why you’re smarter than scientific experts, and who gets to enter what contests and, boom! You’re once again trending all over those message boards, baby. If someone as tragically uncharismatic as Tim Pool can do it, so can you.
Stoner Rock Guitarist
Better for your knees than skating but a whole lot worse for your hearing, consider taking your habits of sleeping all day, chain-smoking weed and cigarettes, and not washing your hair to its logical lateral destination and turn your hobby of jamming with your friends into your struggling career of jamming with your friends. Convincing people to pay money to listen to you can’t be any harder than convincing that past weed sponsor that a free quarter a week wasn’t enough.
Financial Advisor / Life Coach
Do you love the sound of your own voice? Do you think that poor people are that way because they’re lazy and stupid? Great news; you are more than qualified to tweet, podcast and otherwise ruin your skate legacy as a condescending financial guru.
Fitness Influencer
Now you can take the single-minded laser beam focus that made you decent at skateboarding and apply all that energy into working out at the gym. Nervous it’ll lack the creativity that skateboarding has? Don’t worry. You can lift things, pull things and squat while holding things! So many options. It’s so much more than just shaking big ropes and taking shirtless selfies in short shorts. You also get to give unfounded nutritional advice, make 45 minute Youtube videos about what you ate for breakfast, and maybe teach a Peloton class or two.
Fine Artist
How hard can it be? You’ve seen the crap that most skate brands call graphics these days. And the stuff in the galleries isn’t any better. Just throw some bricks on the ground, pour some paint on it, write a statement that contains words like “verisimilitude” and “zeitgeist”, and you’ll be collaborating on a line of shirts for RVCA in no time. And if that doesn’t work out, you can always easily pivot into being a tattooer. All you need is a tattoo gun and… well, that’s it.
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August 12, 2024 7:41 pm
Making fun of weightlifting. That’s some Grade A fat kid bullshit.
August 23, 2024 2:20 am
So funny… Indeed i’m a guitarrist in a stoner/doom band now haha!
August 28, 2024 10:01 am
Should’ve tagged pro alumni to each category