I’ve managed to email you a Letter from Inherent Bummer for 130 weeks straight now. Basically for the past 2.5 years I've tried to provide some context on our surf existence, every Friday evening, between pizza and my weekly martini. I’ve gotten married, started a family, became a homeowner and surfed a few a few thousand times and told you all about it, one way or another.

The routine changes slightly based on the tinnitus of daily life, but more or less, my Fridays are devoted to thinking about surfing and sending you the results. Once it’s mailed, like an automaton I head to the pizza place, get a pie and celebrate Pizza Friday with my wife and daughter. Then I make an icy and still gin martini (stirred, one olive) and watch something beautiful — usually my wife simply saunters around our house nibbling on Honey Mama’s chocolate and that does the trick. Sometimes it’s that plus a Friday Night Flick and a mid-shelf 30 dollar bottle of Old World wine before bed. Those are my finer things in life.

Every Friday comes at you differently though and I always try to be brutally honest in my assessment of life and surfing at that moment for you. Like today, total transparency: I haven’t surfed, I’m a little scrambled for time, and I only left the desk to get a snack all day because I'm in the process of making things and these days that means talking to people on calls, orchestrating and stitching the gentle tapestry that is large events and projects thread by thread and banging on the qwerty keys until total comprehension is achieved for all.

We’re attempting big things. Inherent Bummer is a big thing. Natural Selection is a big thing. My surf life and my family are big things. And it all requires a certain optimistic belly dance through flames to pull it all off.

These things we’re working on will definitely inspire future newsletters, movements, and maybe even the change how we view surfing entirely for the better. It’s all part of the Sisyphean task I undertook when I decided to be an independent surf media dude riding the flat spell that is the surf industry the past two decades, and somehow finding satisfaction in that uninspired landscape of disappointment and continuing to roll that ball of old wax back up before it melts again. Inherent Bummers are everywhere. But with that comes stoke. I love what I do and I love surfing but that doesn’t mean it’s been all margaritas on Tavarua between sessions. It’s usually 2-foot HB with south wind and a mug of steamy black coffee, but I’m no less jazzed.

My wife likes to joke (she’s a real, credentialed, well-trained and highly gifted writer) that occasionally over the past 130 weeks I have “mailed in” this newsletter. She usually reads it first and can assess inspiration levels. “Mailing it in, eh” she’ll say, which sends me back to the keys for another attempt. Judging by the fact that I’ve just reached the end of this week’s letter and I’m not sure of the point I’m making, she’s going to have a word with me about this week’s installment too, not to mention the fact that our website sat idle this week while I orchestrated the future of surf competition for the better. So, yes, I’m in the creative dog house this week and she might be right about me mailing this in, but remember, there are things happening behind the scenes and there’s no chance I’m missing pizza Friday, that arctic martini or my wife’s sashay from the hallway to the couch tonight. Lick the stamp, I’m sending it. See you next week.—Travis Ferré

Above Art: Vija Celmins, Envelope, 1964, oil on canvas.]