It was about 10pm on a Thursday night in
Feb last year, when I got home after a few beers and I was thinking…how the
hell can we get more people talking about ONEWAVE and mental health? I had
never surfed in a business suit, so
I thought lets do this. I thought I had a fluro green one from Bali but I
couldn’t find that…shit! I worked out my other suit was at the dry cleaner…bugger!
I managed to find a shirt & tie… so boardies and shirt & tie it was.
At 6.30am the next morning I rocked down to
Bondi by myself with my board meeting kit on –party on the bottom, business at
the top. I was quietly shitting myself but on the other hand I was pumped. At
last it felt like I had bipolar for a reason…to try and get more people talking
about mental health. I remember getting
these weird looks from people and once I got into the surf the comments went
from “Straight from the cross for a surf ay bro?” to “Big night mate?” “Did ya lose a bet buddy?”
My response to the first few was “nah got an early meeting – haven’t got time
to change” Then I built up the courage to say “I’m dressed up for the ONEWAVE
board meeting – we are raising awareness for mental health through surfing”.
The reaction I got from some of the surfers when I said this deadset changed
my life. You can surf the same break as someone for 10 years and have the usual
convos about “how was ya weekend man?” “how was the Indo trip” but you actually
don’t get to know how they are actually feeling. Surfers all look so relaxed,
like they don’t have a problem in the world. Once you have one conversation
with someone in the surf about there mental health, you actually get to meet
the real person behind the chilled out surfer and that conversation, might just
change someone’s life. Walking back from
the surf that day I was a mix of frothing and emotional… I thought maybe if we
dress up in crazy outfits every week, we can actually spark more conversations
about mental health.
Thanks to Sammy Samsum. Joel Pilgrim and a
bunch of amazing humans we have kept the ridiculous outfits rolling every Fluro
Friday at 6.30am, since Feb last year and the ONEWAVE crew keeps getting bigger.
The outfits have now changed from board meeting attire to fluro radness…anything
from Stretcheyz fluro onezies, matchy matchy flamingos, retro getup, animal
suits, fluro budgee smugs...anything goes. We keep getting out of bed early because dressing in fluro and surfing with your mates is so much fun, but the big driver is smashing the stigma of mental health.
If we were dressed in normal wetsuits
people wouldn’t ask us what the hell we were dressed up for and we wouldn’t
have the chance to spark a conversation about mental health. Once you start opening up to people, it is so
scary how many good humans, just like you and me have been affected. 1/5 people
are affected by mental illness, which means there is a good chance some of your friends and family that are doing it tough, that you don't know about. There is one way we can change this and that is by
being open and talking about it. There
is no better place to do this than in the ocean – ONEWAVE is all it takes to
give you hope, that you can beat the funks of mental illness. So get your most
epic fluro outfit ready and ya favourite craft and come and join the ONEWAVE crew
for Fluro Friday - 6.30am at Bondi or Manly.
Thank you for your amazing support and
making me feel that having bipolar is actually pretty damn rad. Lets go surf real
soon.
MahaloJ
BIG BEAR HUG
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