I’m cur­rently read­ing a book by Rod­ney Mullen called The Mutt: How to Skate­board and Not Kill Your­self. It is about Rod­ney Mullen, how he came to start skate­board­ing, and how he came to dom­i­nate freestyle skate­board­ing at such a young age. I’m only half way through the book, but the real take away for me so far is the absolute, unwa­ver­ing ded­i­ca­tion he had to skate­board­ing, even as a young kid. He would prac­tice for hours and hours every­day, on his own, and with lit­tle to no sup­port from his family.

The book does cover skate­board­ing in some detail, and he talks about many of my child­hood hero’s that I had as a young skate­boarder, and while I real­ize that this book may not be for every­one due to the skate­board­ing back­drop, the real story so far is the inspi­ra­tional pas­sion and deter­mi­na­tion he had when it came to doing some­thing that he loved, and going into a new year that is some­thing that we can all learn from.