Australia Entry #13 - November 6th - December 16th, 2024

A Relaxing End to the Year

It’s taken me a while to get back into writing these posts as there is less and less that is happening on a day to day that I find myself wanting to journal about. As much as I wish for my life to be full of adventure and crazy excursions, the reality is that I really only take pictures and blog about the the big planned trips and the crazy life experiences. As we get closer to the one year mark our here in Australia, there are less of those that organically happen and there’s more energy required to make those happen myself, and to be honest, I’m in a weird place where while I want to continue to do fun and crazy things, I also don’t want to always spend the only time outside of work during weekdays planning for the weekend events to do those types of things. There were a few hikes that I had my eyes set on to solo over the last month and figuring out public transportation to and from those locations just added so much extra activation energy to the day, that it partially stopped me from doing them early. Even then, both of my hikes ended up being more like last minute changes into eventful walks as I found one of places closed by the time I arrived (Hanging Rocks see pictures) and another unavailable from the train as it was being fixed and replaced with a bus service (which I did not no about until I was sitting on the bench waiting for the train that never came).

Beyond that, there’s been a lot of long term trips I found myself planning that put into perspective how much I could do in a year (by taking vacation days) beyond the ones I already had tentatively planned. In this last year, I only took one day off from work, outside of holidays, since arriving in Australia and yet even with that extra amount banked from this year, next year it looks like I’ll end up using a lot of the days I’ll have available, with a trip to Japan and Poland tentatively in the books and some additional days added to my flight back to the US for work to take some time off in New Jersey with my family. I weirdly love and hate logistics for that, because while someone has to plan to make great and awesome things happen, it tends to always fall back on me. I’m starting to understand the appeal of travel books like LonelyPlanet and why travel bloggers exploded in popularity on youtube, because there is definitely a market for those things.

Beyond that, I ended up watching two of my coworkers pets, Marshmallow and Merlin, which always is a pleasure. There’s a nice balance of being the cool uncle where I can enjoy hanging out with dogs and cats without the long term commitment to having one. I started thinking more and more about it, and eventually I am starting to lean towards the cool opportunities and fun I would have with a dog, but I don’t think I want to be committing to one while I’m still not fully settled down. I do think a dog would be good for me, though, as sometimes I fall into these ruts where I become a lazy bum, but with a pal to keep me company and force me to still be acting I feel like I would fall into those less often.

I also took the opportunity over Black Friday to buy myself a few things, specifically some linen shirts to wear as the temperature increases over here and a leather, refillable journal to let me jot down notes and ideas wherever I go. I think I still have to get more comfortable with just writing to write in my journal, as I find myself not wanting to use it because I don’t think the idea or thing I am thinking about is worth putting into the expensive journal, but I need to get across that mindset, otherwise I’ll fall into a pattern of not using it at all which is against the whole point.