I guess it is as good a question as any after 115 others.
I started writing these articles a little more than halfway through my PhD, with the goal of connecting the work I was doing to what brought me there: surfing. As my PhD evolved from plenty of field work to more model-based work, I felt more and more disconnected from the ocean.
Writing about fin design, how waves interact with underwater features, and the creatures in the lineup felt more exciting than staring at data and working both sides of peer review.
At the outset of Science of Surfing, I planned to do weekly articles for a year and re-evaluate what I wanted to do after. Two years came along and happened to line up well with the end of my graduate program. And that takes us to now.
My postdoc at Scripps is wrapping up at the end of the month, not because the work is fully done, but because Emily and I are setting off on something we’ve been looking forward to for a very long time now. For the last year, these articles have been written on the sailboat we live on (a heavy 31ft cutter named Tamari) all the while we’ve been gearing it up to sail away.
Leaving from San Diego, we’ll be heading south with the plan to make a decision of east or west when we get to Panama. For those that want to follow along, from the perspective of a true storyteller, I suggest you subscribe to Miles Made Good as written by the one and only Emily Hope Thomé.
As for what is next here, I am not sure. This isn’t goodbye, but it is a notice of a break in our weekly rhythm. We are setting sail to figure out what is next, to see what we want to do with the next chunk of our life and where we want to do it. All I know is that it’ll be near some waves and that I’ll still have questions about them.
Going forward, articles will come out on Mondays at 8am PST, just not every Monday (I’d hate to fully disrupt the Monday morning bathroom read). With more room to breathe, I’m excited to see what comes of it, whether that be more tools, lengthier articles, or turning what we have here into a book.
Thank you all for reading and I’ll see you soon.
-Kevin Okun, PhD and Captain of S/V Tamari