Originally posted 8/9/21, plus amendments. UPDATE: this newsletter is obviously no longer called Working Tidal.
8/9/89.
A little over a month before my third birthday. This photo was taken just hours after mom discovered me floating face down in my aunt’s pool in Florida. Two-year-old Skyler, wearing only whitey-tighties and a lot of bravery, snuck out of the back door of the house and took the tricycle for a cruise around the pool. It was a joyful tide until the back right wheel tipped in, and with it me. My only memory of the day were my two hard-fought attempts at pulling myself up for air and failing.
My mom pulled me out of the pool. I was completely blue. My aunt and father performed CPR and the Heimlich and brought me back to life. They took me to the hospital and fortunately I was spared from any brain damage or chemical pneumonia. While we were at the hospital I told my mom I wanted to go to the beach to swim. The doctor told her it was probably the best thing for me.
So, off to the beach we went.
Yesterday, I celebrated my 34th year of life on this earth. Had you told me a year ago that a near fatal drowning accident when I was two would teach me everything I need to know about life and fear, I would have laughed. I never paid much attention to this tragic moment in my life until I began struggling with anxiety and fear of death.
There’s a term used in therapy called Exposure Response Prevention, or ERP. The idea is, effectively, that the only way around a problem is through it. When a fear presents itself or manifests itself in the form of anxiety, often how we try to cope with that struggle is by avoidance or distraction or pretending like it doesn’t exist. That only feeds the fear and makes it stronger. ERP and common mindful meditation practices teach us to sit with the fear. Observe it. Probe it. Essentially, get comfortable with it up to the point where the fear loses its power over us. A lot easier than it sounds.
I wish I could say the 34-year-old version of me is braver and more fearless than the two-year-old version, but I can’t. The beautiful thing about life though is that with each new year, each new day we’re given on this earth we’re afforded new opportunities to try and embrace the moments that we nearly drown, or nearly die.
Let’s lighten it up a bit. I’m amending the original post with a little tidbit on why this newsletter is called what it’s called: Working Tidal.
I feel like my life can be summed up by a series of highs and lows. Peaks and valleys. Crests and troughs. You get the idea. It’s called Life. It wasn’t until my 30’s, as well as three decades of texts from my mom reminding me that I almost died, that I began to realize just how significant that day was for me and how much of my present living life (i.e. all of it) has hinged on that moment of literal survival of a traumatic near-death experience.
But it’s not just the drowning that’s the big moment for me, really—it’s what happened after. Drowning in a pool doesn’t usually elicit a response like “I want to go swim in the ocean now,” but that was my response and one I still lean on heavily to this very day. Innocence seems to know no fear.
If you read my welcome email/post, you got a good feel as to the Why of this whole thing. It’s easy for me to harp on Insta for its pitfalls, but where I struggle more (aside from swimming… ha ha) is in coming up with titles, especially a title for this newsletter. Originally it was called WAVES, which I didn’t hate, but didn’t love. Yeah yeah, ocean, waves, up, down, peaks, valleys. We get it.
In the phase of namestorming I came up with Working Title, alluding directly to Tom Kundig’s latest monograph because I love the idea of never having to come up with a name for something, but also love the idea of us humans never not being a work in progress, with no real end. But that’s basically cheating. I’m no thief.
But then, like a confident dad ready for a good pun, I thought to myself:
Title sounds a lot like tidal. Whoaa dude. Tidal is like the ocean and waves. Whoaaaaa dudeeeee.
And there you have it. Like a rogue surfer given creative freedom in his first English class, Working Tidal was born.
Do I love it? Well, I don’t hate it. And sometimes we just gotta force ourselves to make [not] hard decisions, lest we forever remain sitting on the pot.
What about you?