We had the good fortune of connecting with Raundi Moore Kondo and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Raundi, how has your balance changed over time? How do you think about the balance?

Follow your passions, they say! Create a career doing what you love, they tell you! This isn’t the worst advice, but when your most-beloved, creative passion becomes your source of income, it can zap your creative drive, leave you without solace, and it is a challenge to find one’s way back to that pure artist–creating for pleasure.

Finding that perfect balance requires daily practice, weekly planning, and an overall commitment to doing things that benefit us as a human being, artist, and professional. Crazy as it sounds, most recently, I found my best work life balance on roller skates. If not for skating, I would not be where I am professionally, personally, and artistically today.

As a writing coach, I love collaborating with clients and writing articles like this one. However, my own artistic goals have been put on the back burner because I am burnt out at the end of the work day. It’s really difficult to write a poem when you have been editing poems, essays, narratives, and articles all day.

In the beginning, while building my business, I was playing in a couple of bands and performing poetry by night; playing guitar, bodyboarding, roller blading, mountain biking, hiking and camping on the weekends. I’d written dozens of poems in the ocean waiting for a set, and plotted lesson plans while camping in the desert, and even recorded song ideas during the late night drive home from playing gigs. It’s during these extra-curricular activities when sensory details are soaked up, and extended metaphors evolve. Surfing, mountain biking, and hiking provide some of the best extended metaphors for life. As a poet, it feels essential to find the balance between work and life, but finding a way for them to complement and enrich each other makes for an inexplicably powerful synergy.

In 2020, like half of Instagram, I roller danced the pandemic away. While working from home on Zoom 40 hours a week, I was losing my mind: pining for band practice, and poetry shows. After receiving my first pair of skates in the mail, I never wanted to take them off. My living room became my skating rink/therapy office. My husband installed a disco ball, we cleared out the furniture, and I took up “the daily skate challenge”, which turned out to be just the commitment to myself that I needed. It was a daily commitment to my well being, to my state of mind, and my physical health. It was pure fun and definitely challenging. It wasn’t part of my job, my music, or my artwork. No one had any expectations of me. Making it a priority and planning my week around it, I protected “skating time” like my life and career depended on it. Roller skating kept me from slipping into depression. Rolling across the floor feels like flying. Expressing myself to music and moving with such freedom unleashed a new artist in me. Skating time was me time, even if it didn’t pay the bills.

These days you’ll find me at the Fountain Valley Skating Rink three times a week. It is my place to check in with myself: physically, mentally, and emotionally. I still look forward to it with a passion. Roller skating has become a pathway to get in touch with my innermost-self. It is strange to think that roller skating improved my writing career, but it has. It raised my energy level, my confidence, and is often when and where my new personal projects are dreamed up and are ruminated upon.

Although I try to keep my mind on my skates while rolling, I often drift off into my creative mind and get some of my best ideas. Epiphanies and solutions come at me from every corner of my imagination at an alarming rate. It is because of roller skating that I finally had the creative energy and flow to complete one of my “back burner” projects. A poetry curriculum workbook (Just Add Poetry: Lessons From The OGs–Poetic Forms & Style) I had been working on since 2010. Logic would say, if you take 12 hours a week away from your “writing time” to roller skate, you will never finish. I contend that stepping away from the laptop and into skating gives me the creative juice I need to start and complete my personal and professional goals with more enthusiasm and joy than ever before.

Since I started roller skating, I have published 10 creative expression workbooks, two poetry collections, two picture books, and a few more are in the works. I have never felt more inspired, productive, or satisfied by the balance between my work and personal pursuits, including and perhaps most especially playing bass. None of my musical gurus have ever mentioned roller skating as a way to get better at the bass, but becoming a better musician was another surprising benefit of roller skating.

Though roller skating can be done solo, you can bet new friends are gonna be made. The introvert in me wanted to go to the rink and disappear in the crowd. But the number of skaters who have befriended, encouraged, and instructed me is long and illustrious. The skating community is one of the most welcoming and supportive communities I have ever experienced. The diversity of ages and backgrounds, styles and perspectives is perhaps one of the most beautiful parts of the sport. Roller skating isn’t for everyone, but my hope is that everyone will find their version of roller skating.

Alright, so let’s jump right in! The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there a person, group, organization, book, etc that you want to dedicate your shoutout to? Who else deserves a little credit and recognition in your story?
I would be nowhere on skates if it weren’t for the mentorship of coaches like Dirty Deborah Harry (Dirty School of Skate), Dawn Cunko, Nicole Lazar, DJ Don, and all the OG skaters at Fountain Valley Skating Center. With great thanks to them, I’ve learned how to stay safe, challenge myself to improve, and have fun on roller skates. Every aspect of my life improved since I began skating.

My band, Hurt and The Heartbeat, has been playing together since 2013. James Lewis, our fearless leader, has given me a place to explore the bass and song writing with wild abandon. To be a part of a collaboration where everyone is encouraged to be creative is the gift that keeps on giving. Richard Cadman, our guitar player, has been my rock through every performance and recording session since our first rehearsal. We have an incredible keyboard player Steve Rice and another phenomenal player Steve Ybarra on drums. And yes, roller skating has even improved my bass playing. Funk and R&B have some of the best bass lines around, so connecting with them through that integral roll bounce on skates has brought a new excitement to my bass playing. It’s just another reminder that when your passion becomes your career, it’s time to find some new passions.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?

As a writing coach, I get to work with creative people everyday and help them make their publishing dreams come true. Helping kids and adults discover a love of writing and self-expression and then helping them improve their craft is about the most rewarding thing I know of. I encourage everyone I meet to find a means of creative expression because I know how beneficial it can be to one’s happiness and mental health. Lately, you will find me at places like The OC Children’s Lit Fest sharing my creative expression workbooks and picture coloring books (Sweetie Pie The Unicat and The Sleepover Superhero). Seeing a young writer walk off with one, thrills me.

Please tell us more about your art. We’d love to hear what sets you apart from others, what you are most proud of or excited about. How did you get to where you are today professionally? Was it easy? If not, how did you overcome the challenges? What are the lessons you’ve learned along the way. What do you want the world to know about you or your brand and story?

Whether it is creative coaching, writing, playing music, painting, or roller skating, I seek inspiration rather than motivation. If I have to motivate myself into action, my work isn’t going to have that spark of divinity.

Songwriting and poetry are my greatest proof for this. I’ve written songs in five minutes after a big dose of inspiration, but it could take me a lifetime if I sat down and tried to write a song on command out of thin air. Poems are the same: pure inspiration can cause a poem to be born perfect on the page: no editing required. So, when I have a “creative assignment” I have learned that inspiration always arrives when I am right in the middle of doing something I love. This fine Sunday morning was my scheduled time to begin this article. First, I put on my skates knowing they would lead me to an idea. Sure enough, after a few minutes of skating to James Brown’s The Payback, a flood of inspiration hit me: I had to stop skating, and start writing this article. Inspired action wins everytime.

Website: https://www.theloveofwords.com/about.html and www. RKKONO.com

Instagram: RaundiKai and Babyyodaskates

Facebook: Raundi Kai Moore-Kondo

Image Credits
Robert Cavanaugh, Sound The Groove, Michael Kondo

Nominate Someone: ShoutoutLA is built on recommendations and shoutouts from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.