Australia Entry #18 - April 27th, 2025 - June 28th, 2025

One Year and Counting

With this blog post, I officially mark over a year out here in Australia. Man does the time fly by. I’m happy to say that I’ve felt busy and productive since my last post, though I also reflect against myself in a negative way and think that I should have done more with my time. Since the last time I posted, I finally made my way to a few more events in Melbourne beyond just having a fun time hiking. I really enjoyed my time at ACMI, which was a museum designed around the history of television, movies, and even things like video games. I was reminded that there are sometimes cool things that align with your own interests that happen to just come across out of nowhere. This time around, there was a specific event around Sci-Fi worlds in film and video games and it was cool to see some of the physical props that were used in different media. I can’t wait to back in the Australian summer to see “Game Worlds” which will be releasing for a limited time at the same. I also ended up going to a candlelight concert and a theatrical performance of “Comedy of Errors” over the last month, both of which were pretty great!

I also spent a large portion of May travelling back to the US and then helping my customer Singapore with come large weekend events and I’m reminded of the importance and worthwhile effort to plan things and do the big things right. As a parallel, I was watching the Last of Us Season Two and I was reminiscing on how during one of the episodes (as well as in the game) there is a flashback that Ellie has to one of her birthdays where Joel takes the time to find a natural history museum with dinosaurs and space suits, etc. What stuck with me the most was the line he said about how sometimes its worth keeping things secret and putting a lot of time into making one specific day worth it. Of course, things are dramaticized in video games and movies and tv shows, but deep down at a fundamental level I want those kinds of moments and so it ends up being that you have to work towards those moments that stick in your mind.

When I came back to the US, I had pushed myself to plan out some additional events, and I appreciate everyone who helped from their end on making those happen. When in Wisconsin, I got to go bowling with some of my coworkers and spent the rest of the initial weekend hanging out, playing frisbee golf, and being reminded of the midwest. I got to see a lot of people face to face again after a full year and got to go to dinner with my database administrator friends from UW Health. Afterwards, I flew back to New Jersey and spent a day playing It Takes Two with my sister, going to the Rutgers Gardens, playing board games (Splendor) with friends, watching some NBA Knicks playoff games at a friend’s new apartment, having a dinner at Olive Garden, hanging out with cousins and playing board games, finally winning a game of Azul, and then ending my week with a trip out to Hoboken to see my college friends and college campus again after four years, going to eat at a Korean BBQ and also meeting a friend at a park bench as they passed by going to a party. Sometimes in the hussle and bussle of everyday life, you forget that things like this are “what it’s all about”.

The rest of May and honestly June was busy with work and finding time to push and plan for some future trips. A part of me was rejuvinated seeing friends and family to push towards having these bigger vacation days committed. I now have purchased tickets for a September trip back to Poland and a November trip for the first time to Japan and I am excited for both. Ever since I started tracking these fun things in a big google spreadsheet, it’s felt very productive to see how much I’ve actually done in a year. Alongside my flights back to the US, I’ve gotten a lot of audiobooks and started using the Libby app more regularly. I’ve also picked up where I last left of with my TV shows and though my hiking has been less frequent, I did find the time to incorporate one trip out to a trestle bridge in Noojee. I also got to do some gaming nights with some friends from work playing Sunderfolk and then having a few weekends playing board games and having dinner at Matthew’s house and I appreciated spending the time to get closer with some coworkers. We still have one or two more days left to beat that game, but had to take a break as one of the crew was flying back to the US for work. Finally, I finished playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, one of my favorite games in recent memory and am looking forward to all the other big story-rich games that are still on my backlog.

A Reflection on a Year and Some Things I Need to Work Through

In the last month, I had to go through a quarterly 1-on-1 session with my boss Cory and we went through how things have been going as well as avenues for improvement and balance that would be healthy to pursue long term. I feel that I’m also drawing a lot of parallels with those talks back to my own personal life. If I had to describe the first year in Australia, I would jot it down as a year of breadth, expanding to try to do as many different things and saying yes where I could to just dip my toes into things here and there. However, just like with work, I feel like I’ve really honed in, in the last year on things that I enjoy doing or enjoy learning about. What I feel is missing is that I can’t spread myself across all these different places without just feeling like I’m not getting anywhere with any of them. I have to be honest with myself and settle on doing a few things and just letting some others stay on the back burner for the time being. I know what I like now, time to get better that those things and or increase my time and money dials on those things to get the most enjoyment out of them as I can.

I also realized that I’m starting to feel demoralized about trying to use my time efficiently but not having the right avenues to do it. I want to plan more trips, but it’s honestly easier at this point to book a trip somewhere with a plane than to get a rental car so that I can get it and drop it off outside of business hours at an airport. I also find that renting is starting to annoy me. I want to have a buy more high quality things and make my space more around my own wants, but its not reasonable for me to be buying better quality things if I’m renting and I’m not entirely sure whether or not I’ll be staying in Australia. I guess that’s part of life, though. If I wanted things to be more stable and look to buy my own home, then I shouldn’t have committed to three years of travel away from home. I need to find a good middle ground of being happy to buy things for myself without having committing to big purchases and for them to actually be things I will be using.

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