Travelday - Trevi Fountain

The Year of Change

So, my diary tells me that today is the 61st day of the year. One-sixth of the year has already been and gone, or at least as close thereto as can be calculated without getting into the hours and minutes of it ... honestly it really doesn't seem that long ago that The Sparky, the dogs and I shared New Years with a passing truck driver in the middle of nowhereville. Not sure if that makes me old or busy or both?

Anyway, I figure it's about time I got around to discussing my plans for the year. This isn't so much a New Year's resolution as a decision I came to while I was on my break. Last year, as any regular, astute reader will be aware, was a pretty rotten one for me. There were a few times that I decided that I would try to do something about it, including here, but in the end I just really wasn't in a place that made me able to properly commit to it all.

This year however I am in a much better position both mentally and physically and I am determined to do everything within my power to hold onto that feeling, so I have declared 2013 ...

"The Year of Change"

Some of those changes will be big, some will be small, some will be life changing and other will seem insignificant but basically what it will all boil down to is that I will stop talking/thinking/writing about things in my life that need to change and actually start doing something about them.

Yay me!

The first thing that had to be done ... because many other potential changes were dependent upon the decision made ... was to sort out my work situation. I basically had to decide whether I was going to stay where I was or move somewhere else. Whatever decision was made was going to have to be made quickly and then, once made, committed to fully. If I was staying, I was staying at least another eighteen months so that I could take full advantage of my long service leave (due in approximately twelve months) but if I was leaving I was going to refresh my resume and start looking immediately. There was no middle ground on this one, the to-ing and fro-ing had kept me in limbo for too long already.

Turns out this all ended up being resolved much quicker than expected ... within days of returning to work I realised that I did not have another eighteen months of it in me. So, I updated my resume, applied for half a dozen jobs on a Saturday, got a phone call on Monday, went to an interview on Thursday, had a job offer on the Friday and gave my notice the next Monday ... nowhere near as painful as when I tried last year, mostly I think because my heart and head were really in it this time.

I gave a fair amount of notice, in the hope that that would give where I am time to find someone(or two) to replace me, so I still have two more weeks to go before I start my new job. All in all though, I'm pretty pleased with the start to the year.

Well, that ended up longer than anticipated, I'll get into some of the other changes as the year progresses.

What about you, how is your 2013 so far?

Hot Diggity Dog

We've just recently booked in to spend the Labour Day long weekend at a dog friendly camp site along the Great Ocean Road and I am really looking forward to getting back to the beach. It's silly actually that we don't get to the beach more often given that Melbourne does actually sit on the bay but the local suburban beaches just don't have the same appeal.

I started looking at some of our photos from the last time when we were there, when Samson was just a new pup, to work out how long it has been since we were last there* and came across these gems which I think just about sum up both how wacky he was (and still is) and how much he enjoyed himself -

* six and a half years!