I’ve talked about skateboarding on this site before, and how much I enjoy the sport. However, I realized today something interesting. I’m a poser. That’s right, a dreaded poser, I’m not a real skateboarder at all. Hear me out.

I love skateboarding. I love talking about it, I like reading about it, I even like watching skate dvd’s and trashing the skateboarding world. I like to think that I’m somehow involved in the skateboarding industry, a dream of mine for years and still currently only in dreams. I get all the skateboarding magazines, run a very successful skateboarding blog (not this one, somewhere else) and am on the verge of opening up a second skateboard blog. Whatever the case is, I love everything about skateboarding except the actual skateboarding part.

It wasn’t always like this. I spent many years trying to learn how to skateboard. I learned how to ollie, kickflip, heelflip, drop in, big air, shove it, and then I started to suck. I got into jumping stairs, grinding rails, and then the injuries started coming in. I hurt my left knee by slamming into a brick wall, then I hurt it again with a grind rail that my step father got me, then I rolled my ankle, and eventually knocked myself out cold while trying to defy gravity down an 8 stair set near a hospital. (Oh the irony!) I skated straight through my college years, but toned it down and only did some minor tricks.

Then I got broke. In college I was not wealthy, even though I was working 80 hours a week and paying for school myself. So in a financial bind, I sold my skateboard for 60 bucks on craigslist and the rest was history…for a couple of years.

I moved to Seattle and work for a cool company that also sells skateboards. I however couldn’t get a good price on one, so I saved and I waited and when the opportunity rose, I bought an Almost Skate deck for 10 bucks at a vans store in the mall. It was in a trash can, but I liked the Almost skateboard company, even though they manufacture their decks in China. I started skateboarding again in our warehouse (at work) and even got some of my tricks back, and for a bigger dude, I can skate better than most people that sit behind a computer all day.

Then I hurt my shoulder. I was attempting to kickflip over a trash can, and BOOOM there goes my shoulder. It hurt for like 3 weeks straight, and I haven’t really been on the board as much. It sucked.

Now what? Why am I poser?

Well for the reasons stated above, I don’t skateboard as much, and I do a lot of talking about skateboarding. I write about skateboarding, and I pretend that I’m in the industry, but I’m not. I’m just a poser. I sit at my desk, and I just chill.

I’m definitely a dreamer, and wish I had an ounce of skill. I am a consumer, and in the skateboarding world a skater or someone that calls themselves one but doesn’t skateboard all that much is a poser. A poser is horrible. I remember when I was a teen, people getting into fights over being called a poser. I’m no different than those kids getting beat up.