28 years ago I wrote about snowboarding for the first time. You may have a similar memory. One that pulls you back to the start and gives you some pure irreplicable feeling. Pursue anything long enough though, and you’ll feel the thing you love change.
You go about it more seriously, with different expectations. It hurts when you can’t do it, and annoys you if done for the wrong reasons, not enough, or even too often. Other aspects of your life are sacrificed, and you never truly feel you’ve succeeded in the way you imagined. I’ve experienced all of this, and if you’re here you probably have too. Yet committing 100% to something, you accept everything: the pain and the elation.
Sometimes it’s tough to step forward with the same excitement. But it’s important to find what elicits that original emotion—and what doesn’t. That nascent, uninfluenced energy that got you here in the first place isn’t far. Find it and follow it. “Biled” a jump and fling yourself down a mountain for no one but you. Like my third grade spelling, the correct way is less important than your way.
Change can rekindle a spark. That was the case with this new issue of Torment. We simplified the words and articles, emphasizing photography—the original goal—and added the hardcover to help keep it out of the recycling bin. That energy returned, anticipated exhaustion gone.
The intent has always been the same: encapsulate what we love with all the parts that make it whole. Jon and I are drawn to the intertwined joy and hardship, and set out to celebrate this duality while remembering that snowboarding, in its pure form, just feels “cool.” We do this for those who welcome the imperative torment in following what they love until the end.
— Ian Boll
