Gordon Bay farmer Wayne Langford’s philosophy on life is that you only live once.
The sixth-generation dairy farmer, who's also Federated Farmers national dairy vice chairman, was in his early 30s and struggling with depression. As Wayne put it his brain had ‘cooked itself like a tractor engine’.
But acknowledging the disease took a while. Wayne was turning 34 and with wife Tyler, they decided that for the coming year they would do one thing each day to remind themselves why they were glad to be alive.
To keep themselves accountable they decided to post each day on social media and so began the YOLO project - which is now more than two years old.
Wayne has a blog almost 20,000 Facebook followers on Facebook, while yellow farmer global well at yellow farmer global for farmers from around the world has 100,000 followers.
Wayne says he sank into a hole for about nine months.
“It was just all the signs of [poor] mental health, disrupted mentally, sometimes angry, sometimes very tired. I spent a lot of time in bed.
"I still had a public-facing role with Federated Farmers so I had to make a real effort to kind of get up for that, so that no-one would see my weakness, that's what I thought. I thought it was the time and so I’d do that and then come home and crash quite often and take a couple days to kind of get over that.”
Wayne would sometimes find himself in bed at two in the afternoon.
“I said, you know, if I don't do something about this, things aren't gonna end well.”
One day he got up put the kids in the car and headed to the beach – it was a great day, he says.
“On the way home that day I said to the kids and my wife ‘hey, let's do this every day. And of course my wife is quite a structured, disciplined person and she was horrified by that idea!
“The next day I went to see my great aunt at the hospital and then from there on … it was all these different things.”
The idea of YOLO isn’t all big bucket-list stuff, he says, although overseas trips and jumping out of planes have been ticked off.
“It became such a simple, personal journey that connected with everyone else. One of the keys to my message is that if you find someone struggling find out who they really are and trying to engage with them in those situations.
“I love to give myself my time and help others and so connecting with others and being able to do that, because that's one thing that certainly got me out of the hole.”
A YOLO could be phoning a friend that you haven't talked to in ages or cooking your partner dinner, Wayne says.
Not that he doesn’t still have difficult days.
“I still have my bad days and I try to share them as much as I can, you know, social media is terrible for sharing all the positives and none of the negatives so when I am genuinely having a bad day I share that.”
An example was a recent A&P show.
“It's the highlight of the calendar, I love it. I changed my wedding date so that it wasn't near the A&P show but this year. I just... for whatever reason, I just could not get up that day.
“I could not get up for the day, but I picked myself up I went to the A&P show, but that night when I posted, rather than posting a positive or hey, you know, here's all the candy floss and what not, I Just simply said I was there, but I was struggling, and I think people really appreciate that.”
Wayne has a blog with almost 20,000 followers on Facebook, while @YOLOFarmerGlobal for farmers from around the world, has 100,000 followers. He's also on Twitter and Instagram.
