Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off
Growing up in Southern California, my brother and I were avid skateboarders. We were nowhere near the professional level, but we built ramps on the sidewalk in front of our house and also, eventually, in the street in our cul-de-sac. We would finish our homework early in order to get some shred time in while there was still daylight.
My brother decorated his bedroom walls with posters. One of those posters was of skateboarding legend Tony Hawk. My brother also bought skateboarding magazines filled with articles about Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Christian Hosoi, and Bones Brigade leader Stacy Peralta. When you’re a kid, you don’t usually read magazine articles trying to get deeper inside a person’s head and decipher all of their mental mechanisms. That means we knew Tony Hawk practiced a great deal, but we had no idea what he was really like.
If you’re a fan of Tony Hawk, skateboarding, SoCal, the 80’s, or if you attended a Boom Boom Huck Jam in the 90’s, or if you’re fascinated by documentaries about humans who accomplish astounding feats, you’ll enjoy this movie.
Tony Hawk has had a video camera focused on him for most of his 50+ years on this earth. The documentary Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off showcased not only decades of video footage, but also shared interviews with Tony and his skateboarding compadres. This documentary is far more than just a skateboarding highlights reel; it’s a fascinating peek into the true nature and personalities of these various skateboarding idols, as well as the dynamics of their professional and personal relationships with Tony Hawk.
The featured interviews revealed the level of Tony Hawk’s ambition. The intensity. The obsession.
A few weeks ago, I authored a post titled Is Ambition Good or Bad? I wrote that before I watched this documentary. What I shared about ambition is definitely food for thought when it comes to Tony Hawk and other great achievers.
Having ambition is critical. It’s what drives you to succeed. But at what point does it become too much? Where do you draw the lines between healthy, approaching obsession, and flat-out dangerous? At what point do you say, “I have accomplished what I set out to do?” – especially when your definition of “what I set out to do” changes each quarter or each year?
As I watched this Tony Hawk documentary, I enjoyed a trip down memory lane…reliving our days pushing ourselves to learn new skateboarding tricks. But the part of my personality that drives me to achieve, achieve, achieve experienced a check-in that everyone should take at some point.
Is ambition good or bad? Was it good or bad for Tony Hawk? More importantly, is it good or bad for you?
If you’re an ambitious go-getter who’s looking for a step-by-step guide to productivity and balance, check out The Inefficiency Assassin: Time Management Tactics for Working Smarter, Not Longer.
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