Australia Entry #14 - December 16th - January 26th, 2025

Big Plans

If I’m being honest with myself, I think it’s more and more likely that these posts are going to turn into a monthly thing, instead of a bi-weekly thing as things have turned into normal life again. Last year ended with a some relaxation and some self reflection. I have now been living in Australia for over 9 months, and approaching the first year mark. Time moves so quickly that it’s crazy to think that almost a year has passed since I have found myself out here. It’s been over a year now since I made the decision to do this crazy life change. I’ve realized there are things that I really do love about the decision, but I also find myself lonelier than I want to be. During the holidays and now with my mom flying out here for a trip, it hit me pretty hard that a lot of my life for the last year has been solo. I find time to read books, play games, and watch tv shows, but I also find myself just wanting to do things with others more and more. I am truly grateful for the hiking group that I attached myself to, but beyond those events, a lot of my time has been spent taking walks around the city and doing a lot of thinking. I also realized how much I rely on pushing myself to do new things and get out of my own comfort zone to find fulfillment. It’s been really easy for me to fall back into bad habits, like eating less in general, but also less healthy and spending my time doom scrolling.

Something I started two years ago was writing to myself and putting to paper things that I want to strive to do as my new year’s resolutions. Overall, this year, I find that they have not really changed at all. I find myself still wanting to do the same things, and finding that I haven’t really done the ones that I had wanted to do last year. It’s probably better for my bank account and my future retirement, but I am pretty content with the things I do and they don’t cost much to be able to do them. I am happy to find a book and spend time reading it. I enjoy video games and I had been playing through a backlog of games that I already owned. I like hiking and there’s really only transportation costs for that. I don’t like to drink, or go out to clubs. I’d rather a quiet evening with a show playing. But I’m also recognizing that the things I like to do are things that people tend to do on their own, and so I’m finding that I need to make a physical exception in my day to day to do things that would let me meet new people.

That being said, while I started this post out pretty negative in myself reflection, I think I also tend to skew towards being hard on myself, to try to push myself to be better and usually that’s by reflecting on things that haven’t been going so well that could be improved. There have been some great things as well. I think throughout the year my time at work has changed from doing the work to make sure things go smoothly for my customer (but also to make my future self’s life easier) to more of a push by my customer’s to make sure everyone is doing the right thing. I’m looking to get involved in more impactful work with prospective customers and region wide initiatives that will hopefully get me more involved with colleagues.

I also have a ton of trips planned and things that I want to push myself to do this year. Already, my mom has flown out to Australia using one of my company’s personal flybacks and it’s been great to see her. We spent some time with her and my aunt walking near the city and Australian Open and I left them to go on a two week cruise around Australia and New Zealand. At the same time, my mom brought with her my updated driver’s license from the US, where I now have a fully valid (non-probationary) license. I’ve planned to go on the Great Ocean Road with my mom near the beginning of February and I’m happy to start to take some time off from work to enjoy life. In 2024, outside of one trip I did with one of my best friends from NJ to Washington state to use my vacation days before they were converted away, I took one day off from work to extend a trip to Tasmania that I wrote previously about. I have a lot of days off that I banked and I’m hoping that I can relax some of the grind that work has been to go off and experience and enjoy some things around this part of the world. After the Great Ocean Road, if all goes well with the driving I plan to figure out a trip for Easter back to Tasmania to hike the Three Capes and camp out for the first time in my life. I’ll also be flying out to Sydney in late February to see some friends and flying back to the US in early May for a conference at my work and extended that a week to see family and friends back in New Jersey. I’m hopeful that this year will be a healthier balance of personal endeavors, but also spending extra time with people and being less solo about things. I’m most ecstatic about the ability to rent a car so that I can maybe fly out to New Zealand for an extended weekend or just be able to drive to some further hikes and national parks around Australia that I wasn’t able to do on my own until now. My mind is already thinking of all the different options, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself and want to make sure I feel comfortable after this initial road trip.

I’ve also realized that I need to be honest with myself and how I use my time, based around my own personal goals. In the past, for both work and school, I’ve tended to push to achieve goals that are beyond me, not by cutting back on things that I already do, but by putting more time in general to these things. If I wanted to learn more or try a new thing, I would continue to do the things I already do but just put more time ontop of that to try to achieve that new thing. That’s not possible with my life goals. When I put more time into work or school, I would typically take that time out of the time I used for life. I never got good at cooking or whittling or learning to play the piano because work encroached into that time, even if not by simply taking up a bigger chunk of my time, but also by putting my mind into a state where I didn’t want to learn something new.

This year is going to be my year of taking things slow, but doing things right. I would describe last year as my year to try new things. I rarely revisited movies, shows, games, and experiences after going through them once. I tended to push towards trying more and more, even if I wasn’t actually reflecting back on those experiences and having it be worth my time. This year, I have a better plan. I have a set of books I want to read, and I know what it takes to keep to the time frames I have set for myself. I know that I liked the bigger trip I took to Tasmania a lot more for hiking then all the smaller hikes that filled my weekends so I want to push to doing more of those. I want to spend my time more efficiently, versus just finding ways to spend my time. When I played my video games, last year my goal was to try to play through as much of the backlog of games that I could so I could put a dent in it, but I wasn’t taking into consideration my own mood when playing the games so with some of the smaller ones I pushed myself to play through it, even if I didn’t feel like I wanted to. This year, I’d like to reorganize my priorities and have committed time to doing the things I like to do, but also some committed time to doing things I have not tried before, and in order for that to be healthy, I need to take time away and set boundaries for myself. I need to commit to a more rigid schedule and I need to plan more, or else I will fall into my lazy habits again. I don’t want to be watching a movie or tv show and multitasking on my phone or on a second monitor if I truly want to be watching what I am. My favorite show of this year was one that I committed the time to watch on the couch using my TV as I knew from episode one that it would be something I was going to truly enjoy. I don’t want to be reading a book and having my mind wander to thinking about something else and forgetting what I was reading. I don’t want to be marking things complete without actually getting something out of them.

I want to commit myself to making an atmosphere where I can focus on the thing I want to do, and if I am not in the mood for that, I will find a way to make myself be in the mood, not by dropping the thing I want to do, but by thinking of what it would take for me to better align my inner goals with what I am actually spending time on.

Here are things that I’ve also found myself wanting to spend time doing. I had previously decided it should always be twelve, for the twelve months in a year:

Getting better at exercising consistently and getting my weight up. I want to feel better doing everyday things and I want to make myself more flexible as it’s something I’ve always recognized I was horrible at.
I want to spend the time to learn about architecture. I have an appreciation for putting a further effort into making something look nice, beyond just being functional and architecture always intrigued me on my walks and excursions abroad.
I want to be able to learn more about geography and the facts of countries. I want to be able to hear cities and be able to pinpoint them on a map. I want to be able to know about major mountain ranges and rivers, and I want to be able to draw these out on a map if I ever needed to. I had started reading Van Loom’s Geography as a book I bought in a thrift store in Wisconsin and I fell in love to want to learn these “fun facts” that are probably only ever useful during a trivia night.
I want to get better at cooking. I recognize that I don’t know enough recipes and likely don’t spend enough money and time to keep my body healthy and though I do not feel bad because of it on a typical day, I can sense a trend in the wrong direction that I want to change.
I want to continue to play story-rich games and watch TV shows, but I realize I need to scale back on the amount of time I spend doing these things because it is an easy place for me to lose time to, especially during weekends where I can do other things only during those more extended periods of time (like travel and do multi-day hikes)
I want to hike, but to new and exotic places. I want to do bucket list things and I don’t want anything to stop me. In a perfect world, I would like to be able to pick a random place in the world and feel comfortable to fly there, rent a car, book accomodation or pack a tent, and enjoy my time out in nature. I want to be able to sprinkle this into a typical three day weekend without having to rely on using vacation days to book one of these trips.
I want to spend more time and share more experiences with people.
I want to do more whittling, or woodworking, or some kind of artisan skill with my hands where I can make things to share with the people closest to me. More recently I think leatherworking would also be pretty cool and a nice way to be able to gift things that are unique to people while also getting better at these hand-crafts.
I want to continue to weed out the bad from my life. Spending less time wasting time with doom scrolling. I want to find a way to push my mind towards using that time better with writing or reading or just taking a walk to get my mind of things. I want to find a way that when I do find myself having time in the day I don’t waste it doing something dumb.
I want to get more consistent at doing the bare minimum to keeping a healthy body and mind and not using that time as something that I can eat into if I am more interested in doing other things with it at the time. I want to sleep a certain amount each day, keep up with daily routines and then taking the time away from other things or being content with stopping early when doing other things.
I want to wake up earlier and go to bed earlier. When reflecting, I find most of my best days start when I have more time in the morning and the bad habits compound from that. I don’t make a better lunch or feel worse throughout the day if I run out of time in the morning.
I want to spend more money, but on things that matter to me. I have it, but I tend to over save and not use it. I should push myself to do more hobbies and try new things by committing to them with money. Don’t be scared to spend a few hundred on something I know I will want to use or don’t be scared that I “wasted” my money if it is something I end up not liking. Don’t be scared to book a trip somewhere because of price, but don’t be dumb about it.