Single Focus

Whenever I feel stressed, it usually comes down to one thing. I’m trying to focus on too many things at once. Sometimes I catch it early and force myself to slow down and do one thing properly. Other times I don’t, and I end up doing a lazy version of everything instead.

The problem is that riding doesn’t really allow for simplicity. You can’t just be a good rider and expect things to work out. There’s training your tricks, training your body, growing an audience, working with brands, planning travel, paying for travel. All of it matters, and all of it competes for attention.

That’s the contradiction I keep running into. I know I work best with a single focus, but this sport seems to demand the opposite. And that tension is a big part of why this journey feels so difficult at times.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to deal with that, and what it would look like to give myself one clear focus for 2026. Something I can put at the top of the priority list and allow everything else to fall underneath it. That doesn’t mean I stop doing other things entirely. It means I need to relearn how to do some things just for enjoyment, without trying to optimise or win at all of them.

So for this year, my single focus is to bring more attention to Slopestyle within Australia.

What that actually looks like is still unclear. It might mean stepping back from competing. It might mean travelling less. It might mean letting go of the structure I’ve built my life around over the last few years.

And that’s where the doubt comes in. I don’t know if focus is something I can selectively turn on and off. I’ve built my identity around going all-in. So what happens if I try to care deeply about one thing, while deliberately caring less about others? What if that softer approach leaks into the thing I’m trying to prioritise?

The honest answer is that it might. This approach could fail. But I’m willing to test it. Because continuing to do everything halfway out of fear of choosing wrong feels worse than committing to one direction and seeing where it leads.

If this works, great. If it doesn’t, I’ll know I need a different strategy. Either way, doing nothing differently isn’t an option anymore.