Adam Searle » Blog

So yeah, its been a challenging week. Definitely really hard trying to adapt to 9-5 type wowrking hours. I’ve been really tired all the time, which generally annoys me a lot. Give it a bit more time!

Started back rehab last week. Wont go into the details of it, but my back issues are substantial. One bone is connected to the next - so true. I go in with back issues and they start working on ankle issues heh. In any case, so far, its been great. While I’ve heard most of the physio points before (been around that block a billion times), its nice to have a regimented two day a week plan - forces me to get active. The main thing I hope to gain from this rehab is motivation, and so far its working. My back pain hasn’t really stopped - its very on off, mostly off - but when it goes on (like last night), its on all day - absolute motherfucker. Over time it will get better. But more important is building up core strength and stability. This is the key to improvements in many areas.

Some say its an odd view, but I have long since seen the body as a system of continual updates. Calling it a computer system needing upgrades is crude, but it makes a good analogy. Right now I’d say I’m going through firmware and software upgrades - hardware upgrades done for the time being. I know full well on the horizon there is more work to be done, surgery etc down the line, but I dont fear it at all.. I look forward to it. Really is a machine. Things need improving, things can be optimised, boom. I’d happily install a new ankle, but I haven’t found any good prices on ebay
Changed my gym membership over (*swish voice… to a platinum membership at fitness first) - god I hate fitness first as a company, but the fact there is one just around the corner from me is awesome. Costs more, is pretty swish, but damn, the convenience is great. Went for the first time on sunday, a good feeling! They are open late-ish, so that should help too

Saw a PS3 for the first time last week, wicket. Ubisoft had a sales promo thing for EB etc, so that their staff will push ubisoft games I guess. Anyhow, the event was very much on the cheap, but GRAW2 on 360 looked wicked (except the bloody grass, so last-last generation, urgh! yes stephen - I have at least one issue with everything ;). The PS3 itself looked hot hot hot. What it was running was not not not. Some shitty old ubisoft flight sim game - blazing angles. Snore. Ran bad (ran worse on the 360 tho) - ugly, old port. Show us something decent! Would have loved to have seen warhawk running on it instead! Speaking of 360s, I plan on getting one soon, but not too soon.. need a new monitor first, HD yada yada

Weekend was chilled. Drinks friday, chillin saturday, movie coffee etc sunday. Three types of events for three moods with overlapping mates, rockin. I need to drink more tho

The new season of 24 is awesome! As is top gear. I hate watching them an episode per week (now that I’ve finally caught up on all of them) - having the dvd set and playing as many as you want is definitely the way to go. Alas
Oh, and I’m temporarily clean shaven. Mistake. I miss my goatee already. This will be ammended for the weekend!

Got home at like 6am, saw the sun rise. Very cool! Reflective, deep mindset haha

Great night out - geeks elite mini edition at johnnys place. Basically just lots of xbox 360ing. I’m inching closer and closer to getting a 360 - what’s holding me off now is I want to wait till our renovations are done (we start renovating at home in a couple of weeks!), I have a HD screen (will happen once I get my new room with a lot more ROOM), and possibly the newer cooler 360 comes out (quieter, runs cooler, bigger hdd, hdmi - or so the rumours say). Xbox live ghost recon would be SO cool

At last, I’ve figured out what this year will be about!

I recently returned from a week up in noosa, queensland. Awesome holiday, fantastic to get out of sydney and away from everything. It honestly felt strange coming back - distant, like a reconnection to a far away past. I’ll take that as it was a good break away heh.

Best of all, the holiday gave me a lot of time to think. Looking back, really, it was a period of soul discovery. I had a lot of questions to answer, on where I wanted to go witih life, work, friends, morals, fun.. I feel like a lot of my life is under review. Now I feel like its only the beginning of a much longer journey, one I’d like to label: 2007 - the year of soul discovery. I’ve had a few ideas so far on what I need to change, and with my return from sydney, they shall begin straight away. The goal is to feel more positive soul-wise towards the end of the year, to achieve a happier life balance, and generally be happy.

First and foremost, it involves establishing boundaries. I’ve never been good with boundaries - especially with work; it becomes all consuming. I throw myself into it, achieve a great deal, and sacrifice a lot of ‘what I could be doing otherwise’ stuff. Time to myself is important; time to reflect, time to think, time to just chill and decompress. The main boundary I’ll be setting is with work - moving to a more 9-5 style regiment, where I’m not working all day and all night.

Second is putting more time into pursuing things that interest me. A large slice in this is relationships, others include things I find interesting that really could do with more time. I wouldn’t mind getting back into playing music, I wouldn’t mind kayaking more (got kind of addicted to that while at noosa)

Third is putting my own interests at a higher priority. Sometimes I stretch myself too far in doing favours or excess in work - so this is kind of like point 1. Putting my own wellbeing at a higher priority level. Taking care of my health more - putting more effort into taking strides forward with that. Protecting the feel good

Fourth is not holding back in letting my opinions and values be known. Too often when I know someone will have a significant difference in feeling on opinion or value to mine, I don’t push the point. Its important to stand up to what you believe in, so I aim to do more of that

Some things have lost priority or been postponed. Car aspirations are now on extended hold. Travel plans I think now will likewise be looked at next year. My general plan is to establish a comfortable course for this year, follow it and enjoy, and then next year go overseas for an extended period and reconsider where I am and what I want. That’ll be a huge step - potentially a change in job direction, and a whole lot of new experiences. If this is the year of soul discovery, next year will be the year of soul reaction.

As an aside, last years goal was extremely successful - the year of risk. Getting into the working world was a big step. Freelancing was great. Teaching was a huge growth demonstrative experience. Being involved in starting a company and really pushing myself forward with that was a huge opportunity and step. Staying true to my goal of meeting new people was also achieved. If this year can succeed as much as last year did, I’ll be overjoyed

And so the year of soul begins..

Well, I’m just getting ready to head out for new year celebrations Its a good time in life, both short and long term.

Maybe one of my new years resolutions will be to blog more!

Have a safe and happy new years, 2006 was awesome, and all the best for 2007!

Now to get very very drunk, get to it!

cheers,
Adam

Cool weekend. Friday night I had a bbq at mine, was heaps of fun. Considering the fact that I’m pretty useless with cooking food, it was more of a “here, I’ll provide the venue, someone else can cook” type deal See pics on my mobileblog, over to the side of this page..

Saturday night saw borat. Awesome movie! I pretty much spent the first hour perpetually laughing. The second half of the movie was a bit slow (and maybe unnecessarily ‘deep’ with the whole character hits rock bottom thing - I mean, its a comedy, not a deep story on borat), but it was great! It’s hard to tell what scenes were staged and what weren’t - my only wish is that the dinner party scene was real, because if so, that’s simply gold!

Today went to the castle hill showgrounds for the medievil fair and guinea pig show. Something different, quite cool!

Now I have a ton of work to get through.. due to good news! Our games company just secured a couple of really cool deals, and that’ll keep me busy for at least a month - which means as of tomorrow, I’ll be transitioning from full time freelancing to working for our company, full time. Its been a long battle, but finally we’re putting the stake in the ground (expect bitter posts about being over worked in.. a week or two..)

Spent a few days earlier this week down at Lake Conjola, staying at Bens holiday house. A bunch of us went down, but Jase and I had to head back early for werk. Twas awesome! Really nice lake to kayak through, we honestly felt like explorers (that, or the fact that we had no idea where we were going.. but hey). Wouldn’t mind going down there again in summer, maybe for an extra day or two.

Beautiful drive down there too. A few nice mountain areas. I spent a large chunk of my learner driver time racking up the hours doing mountain driving, so I have a soft spot for it.

Oh, and it astounds me how much food 5 people can get through in a day. Most of what we bought for a week.. wasn’t there in the morning!

I’ve been sooo lazy with this blog. Truth be told, things have been busy lately, so I shall try and recap!

-Jason arrived back in sydney after a stint in HK. Good to have him back in town Don’t worry, we’ve got him back to work haha!

-My games company launched a few games! One for a client, one as a self-promotional kind of thing. In a latter post I’ll talk about what we do.. I’ve kind of concealed it up to now

-Gemma had a rockin bday! Minus 5 is an awesome bar. When we went in the temperature was about -15, did the whole ski jacket thing, it was great. After 30mins you’ve kind of had enough heh. Discovered a cool beer garden at some pub in the rocks. Can’t remember the name (the orient.. maybe.. no..) but yeah its begging to be rediscovered another time

-We are all envious of morgans new car!

-Somewhere in this rough order of things, was the Richmond airshow! Very very cool. Hooj dave and myself trekked up to the air base up there (battled against hick driving as well - quite a traumatic experience - nearly died 3 times on the road). Great day. Felt like a smaller version of avalon, but considering it was a quick drive up there, not bad! The Hornet demos they did were great - generally speaking there is a rule that planes cant fly over the crowd, who are assembled about 100ma way from the runway. One of the four hornets in their little performance broke off and flew low and fast over the crowd - we so weren’t expecting it and it was AWESOME! Ear burstingly loud, and the whole crowd was surprised. Show highlight for me, such a sweet sound.

-Been doing some work for digital eskimo lately. Check their site, www.digitaleskimo.net. Their home page is now all.. tilty and cool
-Cofa annual 06 expo is on soon - I did the CD again. Its looking great this year, I prefer the clean minimal design. On the tech side, we added some great navigation features, and generally its a nice advance forward. The code is so clean and beautiful, not the end user can see it, but.. embracing OOP, actionscript2 and classes for teh win
-Halloween was awesome, met some really cool people! Fun night

-Finished up my teaching at cofa. To be blunt, its been great. I really enjoyed the teaching experience. The sense of giving something back and seeing people take on what you tell them was very rewarding. Assessment presentations were the best, when you saw all the threads coming together to form a whole. As a student I always enjoyed presentations, and looking back I think they were important to develop speaking abilities, so I was keen on getting my students to do the same. Anyhow, all the marks are in, all the works in, semester is over. I’ve registered interest in doing another course next year at cofa, so we’ll see!

-Debs had a great bday night on friday. The summit was great, we racked up quite a tab. Fun people, great talks, great night!

Busy last month or so. Looking forward to summer. For most of the upcoming weekend I’ll be out of town, so that should be fun. The cofa annual expo is soon, which always promises a good night. And quickly enough, that’ll wrap up another month! Time flies by..

Gah, the last 4 days have been a washout while I’ve been sick with food poisoning. Never had it before, didn’t know what to expect - not good! Nearly over it now thankfully.

Caused some chaos with weekend work that I had planned - basically I fell through saturday, worked to catch up sunday but didn’t get it all done.. monday was a wreck.. and so the rollercoaster goes.

Anyhow prior to the somewhat painful last 4 days - friday night was a lot of fun! 5 below is an awesome bar to experience. I’d definitely consider going again. The summit was great, as usual. I dont know if its the altitude, subtle movement or the atmosphere, but every time I sit by the window at the summit I feel relaxed. On graduation night, it was a ‘conquer the world’ feeling. On friday it was a ‘look where we are’ type feeling. Can’t really describe it, but I always love that place.

Rest of this week look to be a little more relaxed than usual - cleared my schedule due to being sick, but its slowly repopulating with work. Hoping for an easy going weekend!