Nice. Is that in Melbourne?

Edit: found the facebook page, tis indeed! Love that city.

Met my newborn nephew for the first time over the weekend. He's very cute, wriggles a lot and makes a huge amount of snuffling noises.

While visiting, my brother took me to his monthly poker night with his friends. 9 of us around a table, and I had no fucking clue how to play poker. 5 hours later I was in the last three, staring down some seasoned card wranglers. I credit my success to being impossible to predict. After all, if I don't know what I'm doing, how can they? I bowed out quickly once I was at that stage, but it was a good time. Lots of beers, watched the rugby (a nice distraction when I discovered I had a full house but had to play it cool) and headed home about 1am. Then we played games till about 3am, but of course Daylight Savings kicked in that night and it became 4am immediately - oh my poor head the next morning.

Now to meet him and see how it pans out. My boss is jumping for joy that I'm making moves. Outwardly for her staff to progress, inwardly (I'm sure) to get me out of her hair.

Whenever I head up the island to visit him (like recently, he has a newborn son I was yet to meet) we take turns beating each other up. He drags me up a hill for a run, I drag him into the gym.

My brother follows a similar trend. If he's into it, he is into it. Currently it's hiking and long distance running. He has hemophilia, so this is quite the feat on it's own. Honestly didn't expect him to gravitate towards movement being his focus, but I guess after years of restricting himself he's found he loves it.

Happy (though unsurprised) to hear there are some people out there for you!

Do you think the more extreme spectrum experience is backlash from numbing parts of yourself? Maybe you'll find that middle ground once you get through this period?

All my job issues have led me to apply for a role in IT as Desktop Support within my organization. Completely different direction to the management I've been doing, buuuuut I like IT. I've always wanted to work in IT, but have had no qualifications and so it's always been out of my grasp. I like the fact that IT stuff is needed everywhere, middle management has always felt very tenuous in comparison. I had a chat with the hiring manager when the role got posted, and explained my situation, experience and desire to shift.

She not only encouraged me, but said that she is confident my salary could be retained. It'd be a drop in band, but I'd be brought in at a higher level on that lower band, to equal what I'm on now. So my ceiling for pay rises would be diminished, but that's only as long as I stay at that role. With management experience under my belt, I'll learn everything I need and climb that specific ladder instead.

Quietly hopeful. My boss has been blessedly calm about everything, neither of us are poking at each other. She has other problem children for now so the spotlight is off me.

It's so easy to forget it here. The school I attended was an area school, under 500 students total, on a good year. The town I lived in that fed into that area school, has a population of 282 as of the most recent census.

Flying into Sydney and Melbourne alone have been wild experiences, so many people. Tokyo might just melt me.

I reckon you could take images from the area and mix them up with Otago and ask people to identify which area the photo is from, it'd be hard.

Trees are different obviously but the amount of times I thought "oh that's Lake Wakatipu and nobody has informed them"..

It's on the list for sure. Actually top of the list.

I visited Melbourne earlier this year and it was eye opening just seeing what else is out there (I'm very poorly traveled). They crammed my country's population into a city. The people, nightlife, things to do and the food oh man.. The food. I got lost down a side street and had never been more excited to not know where I was. I was excited to use their public transport because it.. Well. It exists!

After that I kinda wanna visit other places. Just looking around PNW feels very 'me'. Like sure New York would be intense, LA would be surreal, but that whole area just screams "me".

I've realized if I had to relocate to the USA and got to pick where to live, I think I'd go with PNW. It's so moody, I love it. It looks very in line with where I live in New Zealand, and I'm a sucker for a familiar landscape.

I'm grumpy, I've hit my gym goals and I'm a little lost, I'm otherwise not hugely stressed et I'm grumpy all the time at the moment. Be kind to yourselves!

Man, I have found myself super irritated of late. Last 6 months or so? A snarky email can set me off into an internal rage. I have to exercise huuuuuge willpower these days to follow my 24 hour rule for responding to things that make me angry.

Also working on it..

Been in my head a lot lately. Found some sheet music and will replicate as best I can on my piano.

I wanted to put this in a separate post - this came across my YouTube desk.

#treason indeed.

Looking from the outside in, Trump's time in the hot seat felt like a fever dream. I'd like to wake up pls.