My career was making me sad and anxious - then I learned to surf

When the dark side of being a journalist became overwhelming Michelle Duff would stare at the ocean's waves and cry. Then she learned to ride them.

Near the middle of 2022, I learned if you run out to the headland at Lyall Bay and cry into the wind, nobody can hear you. The gusts will whip the tears from your eyes, arrange your hair into a curtain. In front, chop and spray, and behind, the Rapanui moai bearing silent witness.

I guess it’s not normal to wake each day feeling a rope strung tight across your chest, to feel a dread stab of adrenaline every time you open your email or receive a call from an unknown number, to see the hours as concrete slabs stacking up around you.

This is hard for me to write, because journalists are meant to have thick skin. Don’t ever cry with someone you’re interviewing, they tell you at journalism school. It’s not your story. It’s not your pain. Your role is to observe, always; take notes, ask the questions. Listen. Convey.

Is it okay to admit though, that after 15 years of being let into people’s lives, of sitting at their kitchen tables with a cup of tea cooling beside your notebook as they describe the unfathomable – the death of a child, the rape of their daughter – and then gripping the dark nebulous cloud of their grief and sieving it into readable black and white, that after doing that for a while, some of it might start to stick?

The crying was fine, but I needed something else.

The sea coughed, politely.

I once trained for an open-water swimming race, hated every moment, and thankfully fell pregnant before the big day so I could gracefully excuse myself. Diving? Too sharky. Paddleboarding? Too boring, also mostly impossible in the choppy sweep of Hue te para. Kite-surfing? Ha, ha. Good one.

I’d tried surfing a few times in my 20s, enjoyed it, but never lived close enough to the beach to sustain it. Now there was no excuse.

I started slowly with a foam board, designed to help you catch waves more easily, and reduce bruising if it hits you when you wipe out. I took a couple of surf lessons, listening earnestly to the basics of when to paddle (when a wave is coming) how to pop up and stand on the board (push your body up, front leg through, eyes up) and where to look (the direction you want to go).

On dry land, this seems obvious. In the water, with its currents and moods, its constantly changing shape depending on how big the swell and the direction and force of the wind, it is another thing altogether.

Oh hi, insignificant human. I see you, wearing your weird fish skin with a buoyant log strapped to one leg. What are you—trying to stand up? Cute. Take THIS. And THIS. Now you’re upside down and disoriented, struggling for breath, here, have THIS.

The ocean was having the last laugh, but it was a good-natured kind of a giggle. It bubbled towards me, pulling at my hair, challenging me to go further. Months went past till I felt confident enough to paddle out past the whitewater, to try and catch an unbroken wave.

Once you’re out there, your perspective shifts. Your eyes are pulled towards the horizon, measuring the incoming swells, trying to gauge where you might need to be to catch the next wave. The land is only useful as a waypoint.

You sit on your board, hands trailing gently in the water, soft but alert, ready to drop onto your stomach and paddle strongly—go go go—so when you look back and see the wall of water bearing down you’re perfectly positioned for it to lift you up, up, and your heart is in your mouth and part of you thinks this is it, this is how I die but you stand up and then you’re flying, zooming down the face of the wave, by some miracle of physics and every micro-movement and decision you’ve made since paddling out here you are actually standing on a freaking wave, this wave that has come all the way across the South Pacific for you.

You ride it in, and then you paddle out and do it all again.

You can see why it’s addictive, right? I don’t know science but I’m pretty sure it’s as simple as those rats, or was it dogs, in Pavlov’s classic experiment. Give them the promise of the thing – the meat, the good stuff – and they’ll come running, even when the rewards are intermittent.

That’s part of what makes surfing so attractive. You might catch three waves in an hour, and spend the rest of the time paddling around or wiping out or just sitting there catching your breath, but the pure dopamine rush of those waves makes it worth it. It can be scary, but it’s good scary. It’s hard, and there’s always more to learn; two years after I started, I’m just now figuring out how to ride and turn along the wave, and just when I think I’ve got it, it’s a new day and the wind is different or I’m tired and I feel like I’m back to square one.

Mostly, I like that when I’m out there, I’m connected to something much bigger than myself. My senses are filled with my surroundings. I can’t think about anything else; it’s just me and Tangaroa. Now, when I visit a place, I know what it is to walk around, and what it feels like from the water. At home, I glance out the window and think oh, it’s a northerly. My husband, an artist, reckons he is going to make a work simply entitled: ‘Michelle looking at waves.’

This summer, I learned that in an Oakura dawn, the water is warm and sky-grey. The peaks fold over like dog’s ears, nudging and friendly. And when you get home, salty and exhausted, and your kids rush over for a cuddle, you won’t have a care in the world.

This is the latest in This Makes Me Happy – a series about the things in life that bring us joy.