Podcast: Oceans Matter

I get people all the time say I must get sick of telling my story over and over again which I think is funny. I guess from the outside it could probably seem a bit repetitive but in reality I still haven’t reached a point where I’ve been in a situation telling my story when I haven’t wanted to, or it hasn’t felt comfortable, or I’ve felt like I'm repeating myself. Which brings me to podcasts. I’ve definitely been on my fair share of podcasts. It’s something that I always find interesting because each podcast approaches my story from a slightly different angle which I think keeps the perspective new and exciting for me.

All the podcasts are out there, you may have heard some, you may have listened to none but here’s my pitch for why I think it’s worth me sharing my podcasts in this Journal. This is an idea I’ve been running with for a while and this seems like a good way to put it out there.

I’ve always felt that the recording of the podcast is a great process where the questions that you want to hear get asked and answered. You’ll probably follow a certain podcast because you like they way they do things, or you see eye to eye with their opinions, or they’re someone you know etc etc, the list goes on. A majority of podcast hosts are great personalities and characters and I’ve seen that this side of them doesn’t get a genuine chance to shine through in most cases because they’re the one doing the interviewing.

Now, I try my best to make a connection with most hosts that I do a podcast with which results in some amazing conversations both before and after recording. So many of these conversations are finished with someone saying “I wish we recorded that part”. I think these moments, when there’s no pressure to be amazing are where some of the best bits come out. I originally thought it would be cool to start a podcast where I record both before and after and make that into it’s own podcast but you run into the same issues as soon as that red recording circle is illuminated.

So following on with that theme, I think from now on I’m going to write down certain quotes, or themes or ideas that are spoken in these non recorded parts of a podcast transaction and share them here alongside the podcast itself so you can see it from both points of view.

And here we go.

A few weeks ago I caught up with Dan O’Connell from Oceans Matter podcast to talk about my experience. Dan is a super laid back human, when we were trying to lock in a date to record he was in between moving houses, living out of the back of his van so he said he needed a few weeks to sort that out before we could catch up. Dan is a surfer, so what you get from this interview is a very surfer narrated vibe which actually lends itself to a bit of a challenging perspective to me.

Since my attack, I’ve slightly distanced myself from surfing. That’s not to say that I don’t do it. I’m in the water all the time, but I’m away from the industry, the news and the competitions so I find it difficult to relate to my identity which from the outside is nothing other than a surfer. It’s what people expect from me. The first word of my bio states that I’m a surfer, even if I feel like I’m so much more than that now.

Speaking with Dan and seeing the love he has for all things surfing definitely takes me back though. Surfing is a sport, and a competitive one at that. It’s the competitive side of surfing that reminds me of the selfish traits that it gave me before the attack (I’ll explain this in another post). But contrasted to that, surfing is a spiritual pursuit where it’s just you, a surfboard and the ocean and that’s the side of surfing I love and appreciate more now. I’ve always found it difficult to find a balance between these two things but I think Dan is in a really good place with it where he’s part of the industry with his own brand, Boardsox, all while doing it purely out of a love of how surfing makes him feel.

I was always nervous sharing my story with a surfing audience because it’s something I thought I’d left behind but having someone like Dan approach it from his perspective. His questions are more along the lines of “What was it like to grow up on this amazing piece of coastline?” rather than “What do you think if the current state of the world tour?” and that’s something I appreciate for now.

Perhaps having to give up my life of wanting to become one of the tour guys has left some baggage behind but I think the person I am today relates a lot more to Dan than I would have a number of years ago. This was fun and I hope you enjoy.