Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

We just had 8 days in Tasmania – a fantastic family holiday with friends and extended family. It was an amazing experience for lots of reasons, just being away from work was one! Seeing a different place and taking my kids to see and experience different things was also great. I spent some time also playing with photography (not working).

I wanted to share my favourite photos from the trip. Some of these are just mobile phone captures, but the emotion was what makes them special.

So today my diary says its time to write an update for this blog. But I don’t want to. Not today. I have so much other stuff to do: – lots of shoots to plan and schedule staff for, code development jobs to complete, documentation to write for another client, a pc I need to replace the power supply on and upgrade to windows 8 while I’m at it, and several web site projects to complete for clients.

But I am wanting to be heard.

I want my opinions to be considered wise. I desire comments and ego stroking adulation (feel free to comment or retch as you prefer). I have a compelling desire to be understood. Is that bad?

Introspection is sometimes good for the soul; baring it to the world may fall into the TMI classification.

So what am I going to write about? There is so much swirling in my head at the moment. I am mightily pissed off at Channel 9’s coverage of the Olympic games (#firstworldproblems). I am very much looking forward to an upcoming family holiday in Tasmania and then an unexpected trip to the States in November. I am enjoying my running again for the first time in probably 12 years. I’m looking forward to doing a half marathon and maybe more in the next few months. I am researching and reading heavily in social media growth, business use and how to harness and use this for my clients and myself.

I’m probably not going to write about any of these things right now – I prefer to be coordinated and structured in my writing and at the moment I’m still swirling – vacillating between opinion and fact, gathering data, thinking, perhaps overthinking, analysing and mulling.

Take what you like from this, or nothing at all, I will be back with something more useful later.

Have a great day! Here is an image i really like taken at the park on my cell phone – as I relaxed with my two little girls.

We hear a lot about work life balance these days. ITs a big problem for a lot of people and its something i definitely struggle with also.

One of the main reasons i struggle with it is because my life is my work. I am passionate and excited about what i do – well most of it anyway, and as such my every waking moment and some of my sleeping ones are planning and thinking about work.

But what is my work? For me it includes web development, photography, sports coaching and software development (those dreams are nightmares usually). I have fun doing all those things, I love the interaction with clients customers and staff and I am passionate about my art.

My relax and off times are often found with a camera in hand having fun with my family. We go the beach, the park, fly a kite and i have two motives, one is to go and hang our with the girls and have fun and the other is to take some photos. I explore new ideas, try new techniques and still manage to interact with the girls.

My Spiritual side – my Christian life – is completely bound up in who I am and what I do. I am a member of the High Calling Website because i completely believe that my work is as much a part of my spiritual being as anything else. They are featuring a fair number of my photos there in their articles which is fantastic.

My sports and exercise are more than ever involved with my family now. I used to play sports that did not involve the family such as AFL football and Soccer and squash. three years ago i made a decision to quit football, not because i wasn’t excited about playing anymore but because i wanted to put that time into sports and exercise pursuits with my family. Now I run, cycle and exercise with all my family on a regular basis. I still do more extreme riding than the family is up to both on the road and mountain bike.

So – I reject this common expression of balance as an impossibility. No ones lives are segmented like that.

Instead I prefer an overlapping holistic view that to some extent allows separation but also shows the overlapping nature of life’s components.

How do you manage balance in your life? Do you have techniques or ideas that work for you? Comment below or on Facebook.

Here are some links from The High Calling about balance.

Work-Life Balance Doesn’t Exist

Keeping Your Life Balance

Sometimes i need to just dump stuff out of my head. Sometimes my kids just say the funniest random things. Judith went out to my daughter at the clothes line couple of days ago while she was hanging out clothes to get a peg. Jadeen just randomly said “I am a stegosaurus”. That phrase has been bouncing around this house since then amidst lots of laughter.

Our brains are amazingly complex things. Sometimes we just do no appreciate the incredible processing power of simple things like coordinating even our vocal cords, diaphragm, lungs and mouth and tongue just to say a simple word. I was listening to Doctor Karl on Triple J explain how Turrets Syndrome caused people to swear occasionally (its not the most common symptom of Turrets and most people with it don’t do this) and he just reminded me to think about how our brains work.

Last night I dream about alien people and apparently asked out loud for a sword (according to Jude).

Yesterday I was able to run 3 kms with no knee issues – I wish I was back to the running ability I had back in the year 2000. However I’m coming to terms with being 12 years older then I was then and my running is fine as long as I don’t try and run like a 32 year old any more. I did a 5km race a couple of weeks ago and managed a personal best in the last 5 years or so so I am slowly getting it back.

Do you run? if yes where and when, if no – why not? Get into the comments or hit us up on Facebook.

My cycling has improved a lot since I got the new road bike and have been focusing on my hill climbing. My Mountain biking climbing endurance has improved as a result. Unfortunately my Gary Fisher Fat Possum broke in half on my last ride. I am waiting on Trek to honour the lifetime warranty and replace her.

Work has been interesting of late. Since I am no longer employed by IT Integrity and have gone back to being my own boss the pressure on my time has reduced. I am doing far more photography, as that is part of our business and we have had a lot more work in that area. I am doing more of the things I love in IT, web design and Excel work. I am enjoying learning new photography and Photoshop processing techniques. I am really enjoying the sports shooting we do as well.

I bought a new phone. After a disastrous attempt to get an iPhone to work without using iTunes I bought a new Samsung Galaxy IIS and am loving its ease of use, its synchronisation with my Google account and my other android devices, the HTC Desire S and the Motorola Xoom 2 tablet. Its great having all my photos from each device synch seamlessly together with Dropbox, my notes in Evernote all synch across all my devices and it works as a phone out of the box without having to connect it to a computer.

I’ll leave you with a selection of my favourite photos taken recently.