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[jugs-and]

how i feel

I don't think I want to ever be the kind of person that doesn't express how they feel. The lack of expressing how I feel breeds resentment and bitterness - I was listening to a podcast with Trevor Noah today, and it talked about this (https://open.spotify.com/episode/01bkWcFMXRCqISUzHPR4TB?si=ba094e16c1834db2). I really enjoyed a lot of what they discussed. It was all a bit depressing, but ultimately uplifting.

First of all, I find you really sexy, and I love feeling your body against mine. I love your butt and grabbing/feeling every part of your body. I hope you're ready for a lifetime of someone who is obsessed with you. I was reminded of that this weekend - but after the morning yesterday was a tough day and we both knew it before the day started.

We are both very individual people, and we are both strong-headed and stubborn in different ways. The morning was frustrating because I felt you were

Moving in, a big part of it, it's two people starting together to be governed by different rules and tradition. I am apprehensive about change, and I am trying to accept it.

The thing I didn't say was that when the cup was in the sink, I realised that someone has been drinking my orange juice in the fridge. The bottle was almost empty and I had actually not drank any. I tried to not let it affect me, but it really does.

I have been feeling insecure lately about my weight and it's impacting the way I am dressing. Everyday I want to just wear loose, open shirts. I don't think I've been doing anything differently, but the clothes don't quite fit the same. I can't do anything about it, but I've been making a concerted effort to go and exercise more. Maybe it was hiking this weekend was so important to me, but I was anxious to get your approval before I went and planned at least a day hike with 2/N-.

I am sorry I was not supportive of you in reducing your stress yesterday. For full context, I know your personality, and it already wants to do 100% of everything - but humanly speaking, it's all taking a toll on your mental. By trying to get you to list the top five items which stress you out - I was trying to completely take over a few of those items, so you can focus on 2-3 items. I don't think I can ever get you to do less than 100%, but I can chip away enough that you can do 100% on a few less items.

The nature of work means I cannot be as present as I want to be , but I think you're doing a fantastic job. I hope that I will be able to be able to find ways to assist you.

I think that's all I wanted to say, and I LOVE YOU! We're going to have a wonderful wedding day, and wonderful life together.

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For all the single people thinking of getting married, here are the pros and cons:

On the one hand, you get to wear a pretty cool ring.

On the other hand, you don’t.

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[07/24] - climbing

I keep on thinking about where it all broke down.

We were actually incredibly close to the top - we were five pole markers from the plateau where Syme Hut was located. It was also the most difficult patch of the ice where I was climbing up and down to help A- find the best route. The conditions were very different from what I had last time in the area - I had actually made it up to the hut and beyond without crampons last time. However, the sunny weather, I suspect, was the factor which melted the snow, and hardened overnight, and created a slippery ground surface.

All in all, it was a combination of factors.

I didn't have my helmet on.

We had started from Auckland that day, my alarm went off at 6am to drive out to meet everyone else in Papakura. I think the tiredness was a factor as we drove out of town, avoiding the morning traffic and generally south towards New Plymouth. After lunch in Inglewood, we arrived at the base of the mountain at around 1.30pm and started the climb to the hut. It was 1100m elevation gain to get to the hut for the night.

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Falling happens, accidents happen - but they are controlled and limited to low-risk areas. The main problem is, I did not make a good assessment of the extent of the falling.

After I lost my footing, I just started sliding. Just kept on sliding on and on, across patches of ice, patches of scree - alternating in velocity, but uncontrollable falling to the next surface. My head assessment made it a low consequence fall, but the reality after sliding down 100-150m proved my assessment wrong.

In the dusk light, I could no longer see the group up the mountain. My glasses, along with a few other of my effects (my camera!!) were strewn across the mountain slope. I never really factored the consequences of being absent with the inexperienced group left at the top of the mountain. When the fall stopped at a large patch of scree, there were three left above, and with losing the most experienced member, who know what that would do to the morale.

C-, my climbing partner climbed down to me while I struggled to put my crampons back onto my shoes, and we trudged down in the dark. 2/A- stayed put for a while, but eventually stumbled down the the mountain carefully.

With hiking, the consequences are usually minor, but mountain-climbing, the consequences ramp up astronomically. While we ended up walking out, the consequences could have been a lot worse. Nothing was broken, I didn't take any head knocks - but both my forearms are completely skinned and my butt and thighs are bruised purple.

We headed home at sunrise the next day after an early morning hospital visit. Accidents happen, but the concluding thought is that they just cannot happen where it happened in the weekend. The risk assessment was completely off - with the open icy snow-field, the consequences are unendingly catastrophic and life-threatening.

In comparison what it could have been, I feel very blessed < 3

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[24/02] Rees Saddle.

A gloomy day with a persistent drizzle. This is the moment I realised that I found my bottle of Berocca water had emptied through my entire bag.

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15 min sprint

My to-do list has "15 minute sprint on tumblr" listed on it - so here we are. People do gratitude journals to make them reflect, and possibly have a positive spin on the events of life. There is a lot of joy in the world, but I feel like stopping just means we are faced with the mind-numbingly dull modern landscape we inhabit. The time to stop is the rarest jewel in this modern world, where nothing matters because everything matters suddenly.

2024 has been chaos so far - I just don't feel like I've been able to stop and breath. For illustration, we had somehow booked in three separate trips to the South Island before March alone. Now I'm just trying to settle into a rhythm of work and private work on half of my evenings. It's a strange lull this week where we had a big deadline last week, and I'm just trying to figure out what I do for fun.

If October 2023 wasn't enough, they went through a second round of restructuring at work in March 2024. The previous round, we officially de-commissioned 3 people, but another 2-3 also outright resigned to other positions. Last month, where the job market is absolutely barren - they demolished through another 9 people last month. It's absolutely soul-destroying as someone who survived, even more so for anyone affected. I have no soul left at work.

Otherwise, the money has been super tight this year. As with most first quarters of my adult life- insurance lump-sums and rates have blind-sided me. This year in particular, my credit card was absolutely pushed to the maximum, and I know I'm not alone in this. Honestly the first time as an adult I've seriously had to budget and shave expenses.

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Speaking of breathing, a shoulder connected with my ribs this past Sunday at volleyball. I was absolutely winded and floored, taken out by H- on my own team going for the same ball. Today is the first day that the sharp pain in my left lung has surfaced to the skin level. Touching the mid-section of my ribs has been painful, where previously it was a unnoticeable pain, that awoke when I moved a certain way.

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Sleep feels like amnesia, or a vague concept sometimes, and other times I grasp it completely. I pass out some nights after a late night at the office, other days I feel so anxious that I've had no exercise and I definitely will not sleep well. The sleep yo-yos within the same week.

I feel like it's the same story, I am telling in more creative ways.

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[03/24] - Mangamate Loop Track, Whirinaki Forest

When the weather for the Ruahine Forest Park was forecasted for rain - we looked a bit closer to home. According to the website, the Whirinaki Forest is one of the world's last prehistoric rainforests, and the theme is green - endless green.

Starting early from a nearby campsite on Saturday morning, we made it Central Whirinaki Hut for lunch with a group of 18 school students on a camping excursion. The afternoon was criss-crossing across shallow streams, over 60 times dipping in and out. There was a brief afternoon tea at Mangamate Hut before a quick trot back to the carpark.

Shooting with a 17-40mm, and learning a lot of lessons. The low f-stops really have a big impact on the depth of field.

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[02/24] Whirinaki Forest Park

Coming to grips with what is Lightroom, also coming to grips with my 18-40mm lens I picked up.

Nothing is perfect, and there is just a limited amount of time compared to the amassed photos from January 2024. The past few months I've been working moderatel hard on a house extension for a friend, and in-between I might be able to post a bit of what has been going on in the weekends.

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Since coming to Europe though, I've noticed that drawing isn't an everyday thing here the way writing is. People think that paintbrushes are for a genius like Munch - ordinary people are embarassed to even touch one. As they see no connection between art and skill, they think that no matter how good a person is at drawing, she shouldn't do it unless she feels destined to be an artist. ...Most people's handwriting isn't fit for a professional calligrapher, so what's wrong with drawing picture a real artist would consider worthless? Europeans must think of handwriting and drawing as two completely separate things. If not, why are they so ashamed of a lousy picture when their terrible handwriting doesn't bother them at all?

page 22. Scattered All Over The Earth, by Yoko Tawada.

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Our bodies are always changing, from moment to moment. In these baths the ancient Romans surely felt that. They'd have unwanted body hair plucked away, get their hair and nails cut, enjoy a massage to loosen their muscles. ...And that's not all. Even our brains change sex every second - depending on the book we're reading, we become men or women.

page 57. Scattered All Over The Earth, by Yoko Tawada.

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To survive in Germany, they will have to walk. My German friends all love to go for a walk and often ask me to come along. Not just for fifteen or twenty minutes, either. They'll keep going for an hour at least, and in good weather as long as two without a rest. What's more, about forty minutes into our walk a friend will finally open his heart to me and confess, "I broke up with my girlfriend". ...without strong legs, you cannot even make friends in this country.

pg. 44-45. Scattered All Over The Earth by Yoko Tawada.

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[23/03] - 15 minutes.

Finished Better Call Saul this week - I think I love it more than Breaking Bad, but I blame a bit of it on recency bias. Of the latter, I actually remember little of the details, so the fan service was somewhat lost on me. I appreciate the smaller scale story - and how it highlights the banality of the everyday. The pieces all add up to the overall underlying sadness to the person who Saul Goodman really is. The storylines are something of a more intimate and human, and it's gut-wrenching to watch the transformation from Jimmy -> Saul.

Working really hard at the moment - as I become more senior, the responsibility piles up, and I'm the last person standing. I don't profess to be anything close to a perfectionist but this is even getting to an acceptable standard of drawings. Otherwise, I cycle between frustration with the grad - and then frustration with the company for under-resourcing my project. I'm left to just pick up the pieces.

The past few months have been frustrating with a graduate with zero motivation and a lot of sass, to say the least. There has been a whole collection of stories nonwithstanding, the first interaction where she told me she doesn't want to get too stressed because it gives her pimples.

Japan, Waikaremoana, U2U across January / February. In addition, T- and I are going to Great Barrier Island, and I have a series of winter hikes as the season comes in soon. The last few weeks of summer are trying to fit in as many games of volleyball as possible at the local park area with church peeps.

Money is a bit tight at the moment - living from paycheck to paycheck trying to pay off the bridging loan from my parents. I don't have much to complain about because I imagine a lot of people are feeling the pinch a lot worse. It is momentary, but it feels like a very long moment.

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[02/23] Umakarikari / Urchin Tracks

It's hard to keep up with everything that has happened in the first half of 2023. There was a cyclone and a clear path of destruction across New Zealand, ripping through half of the North Island, and in the aftermath we were scrambling the weekend after to find a hiking ground that would accommodate us.

All in all, the track was still intact - but reeling with fresh broken debris everywhere, needing to be cleared - fallen trees hastily cleared earlier in the week from across the access road.

And then, there was us, like some starved hikers - just looking for some fresh air and open wide spaces.

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by Japanese forest photographer ぷら @PlaPhoto72

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[12/22] Bell Rock, Hawkes Bay

Photo from a boys trip two weekends ago. S- had been bugging me to do this, and finally he proceeded to plan the trip himself. I could explain it from COVID lingering in the social scene, we haven't had a social season like this in over three years. I've come to a place where the more pronounced impacts have been on our relationships and how we have avoided the worst of it all, but the scars still remain on our fragile needs for human connection.

The Christmas season has been hectic, and I feel somewhat older this year, somewhat more tired. The fresh air and crunch of leaves underfoot brings me to a new world.

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Missing the snow for the year! Not a lot of climbing accomplished this year - but when I had snow underfoot, it felt just like home.

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“Five minutes of peace”

Rob Pointon

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I am raring and ready to go for summertime.

Michele Poirier Mozzone on Instagram