I’m surrounded by family and friends who I love. I travel the world and get to see places most people only dream of. I get paid a lot of money to do something I absolutely love for a living. And I’m only 17. There are some adults out there who can’t even say that…

But one of the most stressful parts of basically being my own company is having my mom manage my career. Not to get all heavy, but it’s tough. Like most teenagers, I want to just live my life, but that’s hard to do when the person managing your career is also the person who tells you when your curfew is. Sometimes, we’ll be having a conversation about business and if I don’t want to do an event or demo, she’ll come down on me like a mom and basically make me. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t happen with managers who aren’t related to you.

So in this episode you guys got to see a little of what I go through with my mom, Gretchen. Plain and simple, the problem is I can’t tell when she’s being my mom, and when she’s being my manager. When I was younger, we’d made the deal that when she was on the job, I’d call her “Gretchen” and when she’s off the clock, she’d go back to being “mom.” But somehow lately, those lines have really blurred and it makes for me having some really, really jacked up conversations. I love my mom, but imagine how surprised you’d be if you wanted to talk to your mother and then someone else shows up with a calendar full of appointments and a list of things you have to do.

After the way I left things with my mom, I was glad to be getting outta town for a while without her. Even though Casey, Tony, Taylor and Mitch couldn’t come with me, the good thing was this was a trip for my sponsor Plan B. That means hanging with the skate team. P-Rod and Jereme are not only two of the sickest skaters out there, but some of the most fun guys to hang with. Then add in Colin, Danny and Hoops and the rest of the guys and you’ve got a full-on party. Being away from home, we all (no matter how young), just get to be punk kids again…skating hard, laughing, and pulling all kinds of pranks. Like the one we keep pulling on Hoops. Time after time he was the last one to get to the van and he kept falling for the same joke. You know the one where you let ‘em get one foot in and you pull the car ahead a little? He just kept falling for it all day. Classic.

You’d think with all the attention the sport of skateboarding gets, we’d get some respect, but man, the minute we got some good tricks going, here comes security or some office manager or even the cops to kick us out. But Jereme has a way of turning anything into a joke and I almost lost it when he stood next to the security guard at this one building and yelled at us to leave. And Colin had this lady going while I was trying to land this kickflip, he just kept saying whatever he needed to buy me time to land that trick.

So while I’m on the road, I’m not only thinking about how tense things got with my mom, but also about Kayla. We’d had such a chill time at Boomer’s just playing miniature golf and relaxing that I kinda didn’t want to leave for Texas. I didn’t want to mess up the flow we had going, but duty called, so I was on a plane. Then Tony dropped that bomb on me about Kayla hanging with her ex…the one she just got out of an intense two-year relationship with and I knew things were not looking good.

You know what mellowed me out and made me forget all the stuff – girls, managers, mom drama - I was worrying about? Meeting this super cute girl named Kasey. She was one of the people I met at the Make-A-Wish skate jam and that meeting happened because she was ill and wished to meet me. It was a big honor to do that for her and get to know her a little, but while she might have been excited to meet me, she doesn’t know how meeting her affected me. Kasey had such great energy and didn’t let anything get her down. Being around someone that chill helped me see how I was just being dumb when it came to my mom and stressing about little stuff. Meeting her was the highlight of my Houston trip and when I returned home, I couldn’t wait to tell my mom how much I appreciated her.