Tag: journey

New Zealand, New Mike: Avocado toast and other things

So I’ve been in New Zealand for a couple months now! And I’m still alive! In fact things have been going quite well as I fall into routine. I’ve been attending professional meet ups, cooking, and getting ready to join a community garden as well as learn about repairing bikes.

What have I been Cooking?

When push comes to shove, I usually adapt and New Zealand has proven no different. I have been baking quite a bit, so below I’ll show off some of my creations:

Flatbread!
Peanut butter cookies!
Bread!
Cheese Puffs!

Flatbread! Why, you might ask? Because it requires 3 ingredients: flour, salt, and oil (plus water). Easy, cheap and healthy. Cookies? I made 60 and it was fantastic; literally ate cookies for three days. Homemade Bread? For a first attempt, it tasted delicious and also looked fantastic. Cheese Puffs? I took my love of cheese to the next level and learned how to make snack food with it!

What have I been doing?

What a great question. I have mostly just been enjoying my time off. I worked a little bit at a stadium serving food and this last month have been attending professional meet ups. The one I found most interesting was on becoming a business analyst, so now I am trying my luck as a consultant to those who need business advice. It’s fun and exciting, and I haven’t felt this motivation since I graduated college. I’ve been doing a bit of writing here and there and just recently got back into coding. I also recently attended a toast master where I got to practice my public speaking and since those are hosted weekly, I’m going to continue to attend more. I might not have a steady job right now but I’m hopeful if I focus this month on finding work, I’ll be able to find something I’m happy with.

Finally Doing ACA

I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ve been doing a few ACA (Adult children of Alcoholics) meetings while I’ve been here. I’ve now been going twice a week and it’s been really fantastic for my mental health. Not easy but I’ve felt a lot of personal growth and really feel my mindset shifting. My problem before is I always tried to tackle everything on my end, now I have a support network where I can openly talk about just how fucked up my childhood really was. It was the missing piece in my self confidence journey and has allowed me to be more vulnerable on the whole, not just in the meetings.

It’s interesting taking this journey overseas but the distance from home really does help quite a bit. I am completely vulnerable over here and I can truly see who I am. I’m proud of how far I’ve come and know that I’m at the finish line.

Travel?

Travel? What travel? I am simply living as I’ve said a couple times before. I have done a bunch of day trips but outside of that, not much else. Since travel is hard to write about, here are some photos instead:

A visit to a lighthouse after a long day of hiking
Rock formations carved out from glaciers, one of the most majestic things I’ve ever seen
Just a normal view around the Wellington area

As you can see, it is absolutely gorgeous here. This trip is exactly what I needed for this chapter of my life and I’ve really enjoyed just traveling around the Wellington area.

Tips and Tricks for Survival in a Foreign Country

I think the biggest recommendation I can give is to simply save up for the trip. Do proper planning and have a piggy bank from back home so you can spend happily. I’m happy that I chose a country where the US dollar is strong, so all the saving I did back home goes a lot further. By saving ahead of time, you take pressure off of “needing” a job and free up time to grow as a person. If you’re working a job just for the money, it can be tough to feel inspired by the experience. I’d also recommend breaking up your trip into markers and my favorite is to break everything up into three month increments. Ask yourself how you’re feeling and if you feel overwhelmed, know that you can always go home after 3 months. If you feel ok after 3 months, push yourself for 6 months and don’t underestimate how much you can change in a 3 month period.

What are Kiwis like?

They are nocturnal. Jokes aside, I’ve found them to be overall pleasant. I had the impression going over that they’d be some of the nicest people I’d ever meet and overall that has been true. But I also realized everyone is simply human. Living with up to 28 people (yes, you read that right) I’ve met a lot of travelers in the last couple of months. And while some cultures I quite admire, I realized that back home isn’t as horrible as I thought when I was leaving. It can always been worse. That said, there is little I have to worry about over here. Kiwis are relaxed individuals that prioritize social interactions over work. I’m hoping in the coming months, I socialize with the kiwis even more and start to really feel like I’m one of them. I have a mustache and long hair now, so I very much fit the aesthetic style of the kiwis.

A Nice Showcase of my double chin

More insight to come

The longer I am here, the more I’ll learn about myself. I am slowly regaining a long lost confidence and it feels really good. And just, yesterday, I touched Thor’s hammer! If that’s not a sign of good things to come, I don’t know what is!

May I one day be worthy.

New Zealand, New Mike: Expect the Unexpected

So when I left the United States, I was in a fantastic spot. I had a job that paid ok, I was in a relationship, paid off my student loans, ran a half marathon, and was spending most of my time with friends. Now that I’ve had a month in New Zealand, how am I doing? Well…

Things unplanned

So for this trip, I had spent a year planning. I asked myself if it was feasible and figured I could make it work. It is a growth opportunity. My biggest oversight was that it is the holiday season. I wanted a year of two summers and a year where I could celebrate Christmas in the Summer and New Year’s Eve in a foreign country. And… It was fine. It was nothing crazy and honestly it would have been better to have spent that time back home. I could’ve had an extra couple months to nurture my relationship and I think the holidays are always better spent with friends and family. That is the difficult part about this trip, being completely on my own. It does not matter how much charm you have in this world, it is hard to completely uproot everything and take a risk. Good decision? Bad decision? Impossible to say. Everything has a trade off, last year I did not expect to be such a good year for me but it was. So to leave that behind was difficult but New Zealand is a once in a lifetime opportunity. So we’re here now. My biggest obstacle has been everything is closed for the holidays, which has made finding work extremely difficult. So you take an already big change and add sitting around in a foreign country for a couple weeks while eating into your savings and it can add a bit of stress; I’ve been mostly holiday on this holiday working visa and my hope is in a month I’m a bit more settled. Hence, if I could do it over, I would have left mid January; a chapter turning in a foreign country sounds great on paper but it’s a lot messier than you’d expect.

Looking Forward

So this year is going to be a year of looking forward. If the last few weeks have taught me anything, it’s that I have a lot of insecurity. What better place to work through my insecurities than abroad? I’ve had to adapt and life seems to be moving forward, slowly. And hindsight is 20-20. A “proper” relationship was new to me before I left, so I shouldn’t be too hard on myself if it ended so that I could pursue this dream of mine. My birth defect hasn’t bothered me too much since I’ve been here but if I take photos I tend to get really self-conscious. This will also be a year of not being too hard and just going with the flow so we shall see how that goes. I just need to have faith in the decisions I make and not so worried about making the “wrong” choices.

Dumb Things I’ve done while I’ve been here

Speaking of not being too hard on myself, I thought it’d be fun to go over some really stupid things I did.

  1. The first would be taking my phone out in the middle of a rainstorm! Guess what happened. The charging port got water damaged! And thus I got to watch my phone’s battery drain as I got ready to hop on a 12 hour bus ride from Auckland to Wellington. The good news is I was able to barely make it to my address. I bought a wireless charger to keep my phone going for a bit longer and then I officially retired my phone after purchasing a new one. The bad news is I had to buy a new phone. And it was the Fan Edition of the Samsung Galaxy S23, which basically means it is prone to scratching, which I learned the hard way. Albeit, the scratches aren’t horrible but I went a week without a screen protector and even being careful, scratches were unavoidable. If I could do it over, I’d buy the S22 and go with a lower data phone plan; I lose the special contract bonus but in the long run it would’ve been a better deal.
  2. I drank too much in Auckland. And by drank too much, I mean a lot. I spent with reckless abandon and that cut into my savings like there was no tomorrow. I also ate out quite a bit, which did not help my wallet. It was fun but I wish I had done a little more planning into doing more day trips and maybe only eating out once a day rather than twice a day.
  3. I kept my phone plan with an international add-on. Seemed smart at the time. Keep the phone plan and worry about cancelling overseas. Not so. It would have been better to have transferred my number to google voice and just relied solely on wifi to access the internet. A vacation, international plans could work just fine, but living abroad I should have done a bit more planning as it could have saved me a headache when I got here. I had to buy a vpn to access google voice and then port my US number from Verizon and even now I do not know if it’s fully cancelled as it is a lot more difficult to call overseas than at home.

Insights Gained

A few key takeaways from the trip so far:

  1. No plan is perfect, so don’t fret if the plan changes
  2. Don’t dwell and always ask for what you want, you won’t know if you don’t ask
  3. Be proud of the decisions you make and there are no wrong choices
  4. Believe it will all work out
  5. Be grateful of every moment you have, life is about doing, not thinking.

The Goal

The goal is to find myself. Even when I was doing well this last year, I felt like something was missing. And while my last couple weeks have been far from perfect, that is exactly the point. I have spent so much time trying to make my world perfect that I have forgotten how to simply live and experience life. So for better or worse, I am here now, on the road less traveled, and I can only hope that will make all the difference.

Expect more articles on the way. My writing has slowed down as I take an easier approach to life but I’m sure I’ll have plenty to talk about such as my visit to the shire and what it’s like living with a bunch of other people. Stay tuned and as always, thanks for reading!

Dad: A poem by Mike Cole

I hope you’re proud of all that I’ve done

It hasn’t been easy, this road that I’m on

And I keep walking, hoping the snow will clear

A ship without a sail, no rudder to steer

It’s been two years since you’ve been gone and that’s not a lot of time

Yet I persevere in the new winds and know you guide me to calmer shores.

To wrap up National Poetry Month, I wanted to close with a poem about my dad. I did this last year and it only seems fitting that I do it again this year. For those that don’t know, he passed away in October 2019. I haven’t talked about it much since his death and poetry to me has always been a form of expression, a way to put to words topics that have been too difficult to talk about. As we head into Mental Health Awareness Month, I want to open up more and talk about his death as I think it’ll help heal the soul.

My father was a sailor for my entire life so with poems about him I want to capture that essence. There’s a lot I could have learned about sailing from him but it’s only been since his passing that I’ve found interest in it. Writing about it is a way to feel close to what has been lost.

That’s it! National Poetry Month is officially over (on this blog). We covered Nature, Love, and Lost this month. The Month of May is dedicated to Mental Health. The articles have been drafted and I’m adding the finishing touches. It’ll be a range of topics and I think I’ve struck a good balance for next month. See you then!

New Horizon: The Tower

Previous Chapters:

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Henry wandered through the forest, the leaves a gentle brown, dry and brittle to the touch. He had ditched his shoes and was now walking among the rocks of the creek. The wind began to pick up, reaching speeds of 128 kilometers per hour. The Earth had become a dangerous place.

Along the creek were remnants of what once was. Henry occasionally come across a cinderblock and rotten wood of houses that escaped the population explosions of the late 2050s. Scientists had expected the population to stabilize after hit 10 billion in 2030 but instead much of the old ways were still being practiced. Animal cloning had become a way to replace the natural and where farms should have been reduced, instead they only grew. Vertical farms were built in the late 2050s but by then it was already too late. What parts of the Amazon hadn’t been swallowed by the Ocean had turned kindling and our once breathable air became a little less breathable. 2040 saw the first carbon recapture unit and while novel at the time, it only encouraged companies to pollute more. Any benefit it might have had was lost to corporate greed.

Henry tripped. Muddy and damp, he picked himself up and looked down. He saw a large vine, no a tree trunk. Moss covered, old. Henry decided to follow. He walked a few steps, bent down and brushed the trunk off. It was black. It wasn’t a trunk, it was a wire. As it turned out, the wire led to an abandoned radio tower some ways off into the forest. Henry thought if he could climb it, he would have a chance to find his bearings. He could here the metal creak in the wind, it was a surprise the tower hadn’t toppled over by now. As he approached the tower he noticed the chipped red paint and heard a faint beeping. Why was the tower on? Wind turbines had all but been destroyed with the Mega Storms that came in the late 2060s and he could see a few busted at the base of the tower, an effort surely made to avoid the burden of high winds. The sun was beginning to set and Henry decided to climb.

At the base of the tower he found the dilapidated ladder that went straight up the some 609 meters it would take to climb. Henry reached for a rung and watched the metal splinter in his hand, the other rung held and he began to climb. Carefully and one rung at a time. The howling grew louder and the tower shook with the force. At times, it felt as though the wind was being sucked right out of him. About 500 meters up, Henry reached a point of the ladder a section had eroded and was missing. Pieces were strewn on a nearby structural beam. Henry swung with all his weight and landed with his upper torso on the beam. The ladder collapsed just as he made it across. “guess no going back now”, Henry thought.

Henry looked around and found some scaffolding. Makeshift and most likely done after shit had hit the fan. Henry went beam from beam, until finally he reached the top. The length of two football fields and he was finally at a small station at the top of the tower. In olden times, these stations would have been separate; a fire watchtower and a radio tower. As resources became scarcer and scarcer and cities larger, it made more sense to combine the two. As night fell, he saw the read blinking light and noticed the solar panels at the top of the structure. All these years and the structure held. Too dark to see, Henry made his way into the cabin and flipped on the lights. A gentle hum and then, light. Henry checked the cupboards and found some tea along with some canned food. “Coq Au Vin” or better known as cock with wine. There might have been a time when people cooked this dish, but in the convenience brought by mass production and globalization why bother? Henry always liked to cook but it was never considered a necessity. He turned on the stove boiled some water and made himself a cup of tea. “Winter’s Nap”, how delicious. He fried the canned chicken and ate a meal, a nice chance to catch his breath before he looked for the main debris field of the New Horizon.

He started a fire in the hearth, and settled into the bed. The sheets, still soft, reminded him of simpler times. Life was never really all that simple when he was born, but he always loved the process of settling down after a long day and feeling safe in his bed. As Henry looked up, he noticed the four skylight panels. These could be tinted off and on but Henry decided to leave them as they were as the fire crackled in the background. The sky was a gentle blue, speckled by red fireballs as the New Horizon continued to rain down upon the land. Henry gently closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

Another Chapter written! I’m having a blast writing this series! It’s great to finally be on schedule with my blog and producing content on a semi regular basis. How far I’ll go, I don’t know, but the story arch is starting to develop and I just hope I can stick the landing for my first go around. So stay tuned and get ready for chapter five as I begin to draft out the concepts for what’ll happen next! As always, thanks for reading!