Australia Entry #28 - June 22nd, 2026 - August 30th, 2026

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July and August: Feeling More Comfortable On My Own and Being Intentional With My Time and Money

This morning I woke up early to another weekend without any explicit plans, though I knew I wanted to just get out of my house and feel, maybe not productive specifically, but fulfilled with the way I was spending my time. For the last four months, I have been living through a world of tiny little paper cuts that had been slowly chipping away at me, very noticeably. I’ve been wearing Invisalign for that whole period of time, and so I internally have deemed this the shitty Invisalign chapter of my life, and I guess drawing parallels from it, it was a time that I was able to fully recognize that I wasn’t happy with the way things were going and time was passing by. Just as during this time Invisalign was helping to straighten out my teeth, I too was working on straightening out my life itself. As I walked out of my apartment this morning, I watered my plants which were all droopy and losing their sheen and vibrant colors. By the time I came back, they had a little extra stiffness and color, and all it took was some regular maintenance work on the fundamentals.

Reflecting on the last few months has got me to realize that what I’ve gone through mentally isn’t really anything new. I think at around the two-year mark, I had started to experience the same thing after moving to Wisconsin. I think the first year is always one where I got all caught up in the newness of a place and exploring, but after around two years in, and especially when the Winter hits, I find that I struggle keeping up with a solid routine and I kind of flop into bad habits. I think a part of that is my less frequent updates to this blog as well, where it’s the lazier and easier option to just not write something down and let the weekend fly by. Suddenly one week turns to two turns to one month and you look back in your rearview mirror not being happy with where all that time went and what you ended up doing with it.

I think that’s how I felt about May and June, and I found myself going back and re-reading my post from then to ground me as a north star when I started to see myself slip into those bad habits. Was I spending the day being intentional with my time, or was I finding the time getting away from me and not having anything to tell people about that I had ended up doing. I think one of my fears is finding myself regretting how I spent my time or went about a certain situation when I become older and those weighing down on me. I get glimpses of that fear sometimes on a random night or late into a Saturday/Sunday that kind of snaps me back into reality telling me to go do something that I would be happy sharing. I don’t want to be talking with someone regularly and find myself running out of things to share. Each week is the exact same amount of time from beginning to end. It only takes a shift in effort in turning one week into a memorable one versus one that fades into one that you have no fond memories of.

I’ve found that being in a healthy place financially definitely helps give me more of an opportunity of turning a week into a memorable one. I for instance, have not had to worry about planning a weekend trip with my office mate Tanner to go to Wilson’s Prom and go whale watching for the first time. I’ve been working on trying to find a healthier balance of experiencing life, but also becoming addicted to the experiences needing to be expensive ones. I still hold deeply that it’s important to me to have something in the future planned to be looking forward to, but I’ve tried to sprinkle in all ranges of things to be interested in. In the last month or two I’ve gotten more comfortable with the prospect of spending more money on something I know I want to pursue or experience than I have been in the past. Money is just an avenue to help you bring to surface some of your deeper wants and desires, though, and so I have spendt time also thinking about where the desire to spend my money is coming from and making sure that that desire lines up with my own goals and desires in life. I think it’s worth jotting down some of those here:

1. Live a life of intrigue and adventure. Seek out new experiences and opportunities that are unique and craft stories to make things more memorable.
2. Spend the time and energy to broadly learn about people and things around you. Once you find the people and things that you value and enjoy, commit, and commit hard to those things that feel are worth your time.
3. People above all else. An experience or the cost of something is less important than having a group of people to fall back on and live life with. Emphasize the value of time to show others you care. You don’t need to buy expensive things to be happy or show your appreciation for others. You can make things priceless by simply committing more time and energy into a task. Put effort into gifts for those people that truly matter.
4. Remember the little things and write things down when you think it’s important to remember. Things become more valuable, the longer and more space they take up in your head so make sure the things taking up that space are worth being there.

In keeping true to my previous post, I have also been pushing myself to be more intentional with friends and being more willing to open up I’m really happy to have started talking more regularly with someone that I never had the chance to really get to know while living in Wisconsin and we’re committing to being pen pals, which I think is an awesome idea because it helps visualize the willingness to spend time and money on the other person and sending physical mail, even though we can and have been sending messages to each other for free on instagram. I’m also really happy to have met someone online who has shown that they are interested in me by showing how much they remember about the conversations we had. I think things are early goings, but I can already tell that I want this person to be someone who I can call a friend well into the future. I was happy to have planned a little outing to go see the Odyssey in theaters with someone and also happy to have gone on a road trip with some others where we got to get to know each other a little more. It makes me glow inside to be able to spend money and show how much simple things like that mean to me when the time is spent with people you respect and enjoy the company of. If any of you are this, then you know who you are an I appreciate you finding the time in your busy lives to make a little room for me in it! I’ve also reflected that while I am trying to grow these new friendships, I also need to remember about my long standing ones as well, so I’ve been happy to sit in discord calls and just catch up on life with friends back in the states. I’ve felt happy learning about my friend’s recent graduation from school and wishing them luck in looking for a career in the medical field. I’ve felt happy, even though I was not invited to said friend’s wedding, to send them a little money to commemorate the event of it all, because I recognize that you can’t invite everyone to big life events, but you can still show that those people matter to you regardless. I’ve also felt happy sending out more likes on instagram reels and just rooting for the people I grew up with in whatever little adventure life takes them on. Some people that haven’t really been more than just acquaintances have slowly turned into what I would consider friends by reacting back and liking things I post as well (I’ve been putting much more of an eye on trying to notice things like that recently).

Finally, while I think I find myself truly happiest in life supporting all the wonderful people around me and hopefully adding a little love and joy into their lives, I have also tried to be more intentional with my own interests and at least thought more intently about what I want to be spending my money on, because I want to keep expanding my skills and knowledge about things. I’ve started watching two Youtube channels that I recommend. One of them called “SpeeedCo” has felt like a healthy therapy lesson about just enjoying the time you have with yourself and going down interesting rabbit holes, and the other “TheIronSnail” has made me want to spend some money on getting quality clothes that I will make last and care for. I have never been able to really find my own style because a big portion of my clothes ended up being hand me downs from people my mom got them from, but I am finding myself interested in the topic. Similar to cooking (which I haven’t had too much luck getting to stick into a consistent habit), we will always find ourselves needing to wear clothes, so may as well become more knowledgeable about what you find yourself putting on in the morning everyday. I’ve also redecorated my apartment, worked on catching myself up to my “Year of Studio Ghibli” that I had been falling behind on, and bought some dumbbells to exercise with that have all felt like a shift to action on things that I knew were bothering me to have not been doing over the Australian winter.

As a final note to end off this blog post, I wanted to share that I have now officially spent more time living in Australia than I have living in Wisconsin. The time really does fly. Marcin also does fly as well and I’ll be flying back to the US in September for a work conference and then for a week of vacation to see family and friends back in New Jersey. I’m glad that I have been on the upswing from my previous months’ downs as the trip gets closer because I have started to really get excited to see some of my friends and family in person again after over a year of time since I was last there. I have already bought souvenirs and its been a wonderful thing to be looking forward to.

As always, thank you for sticking around to the end. Extra love to those that took the time out of their day to learn about mine. I haven’t had many “Fun Songs” to add in my last few posts because my mind wasn’t in it, so here’s a few new ones to make up for it.

Fun Songs