Creating a skateboarding journal
Mon, Dec 15, 2025
While in Barnes & Noble this weekend, my wife and I saw a pickeball journal. My first thought was, "Do they have a skateboard journal?" Of course they don't. I searched online, and there are skateboarding journals or log books, though you probably won't find one in a store. But the experience got me to thinking.
To be clear, when I say skateboard journal, I mean a book in which each page contains prompts to be filled in by the book's owner. Each page would contain the same prompts. The prompts would serve the purpose of documenting that day's skateboarding.
If I made my own skateboarding journal, what prompts would I include?
- Today's date
- Where did I skate?
- What shoes and board did I use?
- What skills did I practice? (see the note below)
- What results did I achieve?
- How was I successful regardless of results?
- What did I struggle with?
- What did I learn?
- Did I make any new friends?
"Skills" is open to interpretation, but I mean things like flat-ground skating, ledges, transition, bowl skating, vert. These would be less specific than individual tricks. I want to include this rather than asking, "What tricks did I practice?" Because it could be tedious to list individual tricks. Furthermore, not everything is a "trick."
Some questions are of a practical nature. On the other hand, I want to emphasize that landing tricks is not the only way to measure the value of a skate session. In this respect I was inspired by an episode of Dirtbag Diaries. In that episode Beth Rodden differentiated results and success.
For the last two years I've been keeping a log that's similar to this. I record the date, where I skated, the shoes and deck I used, and the skills I worked on. Also I have a "notes" field where I write anything I want to remember, like a new trick I learned.
Also I keep a list of goals, which are tricks or skills I want to learn or improve. I make a list at the beginning of the year. If I learn anything not on the list already, I add it. I don't constrain myself to working on things on the list. Rather, it's a list of ideas for when I'm not sure what to practice.
As you can see, I still think more in terms of results than success. However, I try to keep in mind that progress is non-linear, and there's more to skateboarding than landing new tricks.
I started writing this in May of 2024. I forgot about it until about a year and half later.