The JJ after trip report..
 

Thought I would document my experiences here... In another thread I wrote about my strategy for how to adapt to getting home. Link to thread here http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...pression-55495

Here is the excerpt...

"I have heard, and this may just be heresay, but it makes sense. That NASA Astronauts suffered post mission depression in the early days. Basically what they were doing was the pinnacle of their career, what they had worked towards, and well, once you have been in Space, what more is there to achieve right??

So what they make the Astronauts do now is set post-mission goals. Because they need something to think about and focus on to ensure they don't drop into depression post mission.

I am about to finish my trip in a fortnight and am going home. I have written out a few different goals, creative, fitness and career goals that I am looking forward to getting stuck into - have even begun working on some of them.

It also helps for me that I made a big list years ago of all the things I wanted to do in my life, and travelling by motorcycle was only one of many, maybe make a similar list and consider the things you want to do in life that will make you happy, that are not on a motorbike. I am looking forward to going home, it isn't daunting.

To be honest though, if you were using your trip as a form of escapism to get out of a situation you were depressed in, you can't go back to that situation and then expect anything different. Eventually you are going to have to change that situation.

Anyway, in a couple of months I will let you know how I feel."

Okay so I have been back 4 weeks now and thought I would post in and update how things have come along;

Before I came home I set a few goals, here they are;

Career
- Job 80k+ Base with career opportunity to build over 5 years in CSG/Drilling area.

Creative
- Finish all V-Logs from trip (you can check out these logs in my RR)
- Get full gear setup for filming/editing v-logs

Financial
- Save 20k for investment
- Put 5k away for rainy day

Fitness
- Powerlifting - BP 100kg, Squat 125kg, DL 175kg.
- Rockclimbing course

Leisure
- Take Nathan on holiday overseas.
- Rebuild bike with Dan, learn mechanics, go on road trip and film.

SO, those were my goals. I have progressed on some of them. As soon as I got back I roped in my two best mates and convinced them to come and train with me 3 days a week in powerlifting. We have been doing this for the past 4 weeks and are all seeing progress together. This has been good as it gives us time to catch up and to build back up friendships which were apart for a while. I have put my Bench Press up to 65kg, Squat at 80kg, Deadlift at 110kg - all on 5x5 so theoretically that should be 70% of the weight I should be able to 1 rep max - going to keep training for another 8 weeks and then go for one rep maxes, might get those goals early. So fitness is going well, I have already put back on 2.5kg of the 8kg that I lost while I was away.

Career wise I had been in talks with old employers and clients of mine before I left. I have just signed an agreement on Friday for 80k per annum as an offsider on a drill rig. This is to train me in the drill rig basics before I get further into the drilling mud side of things in 2 months time, when they will increase my pay - however the job involves a lot of travel and a lot of time away from home which I will talk more about in a minute.

The video logs and ride reports I can't get the motivation to write at the moment, the problem being that I really feel the need to focus on the present and the future, rather than the past. Thinking about the trip too much at this point is just a bit depressing. So I am giving myself a break from that until I feel everything is back on track and will get stuck into it in the new year.

The other things I will get to in due course.


So what have I found? What have I been doing since I got back?

I took a few tips from here and there about things to do when I got back.

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ne-after-42169
How to Cope With Returning Home After Long Term Overseas Travel

I had lived os for a while in the past and had done the returning home before. Last time I made the mistake of coming back with little money, although I had less of a choice then, this time I had enough money to last me, which has done me well.

One of those things was not to talk too much about the trip... I know that talking about it all the time alienates people and I am happy to just let it be, this has worked well so far. Generally people just want to know highlights and I have picked a couple of interesting stories to tell so it's a 5 minute conversation and not a 5 hour one.

Getting back into a routine has also been important. Fortunately my dad runs his own business and I have been able to do odd jobs for him around the place. That has helped me to feel productive and to ease back into a 5 day work routine. Also as he has an office I have been able to go in there to do my own work/study which has helped too.

My close friends have girlfriends now and so they are not as free as they were before to go skylarking on weekends. As my other half is up in Hervey Bay, about 4 hours drive away until she finds a job in Brisbane (where I am) I am left with a bit of idle time... I can't complain about this, I am happy for my mates, it is just something to deal with.

Idle time at the moment is the devils playground. Too much time to think is not good... staying occupied at the moment is a good thing.

What I have found (or what I think I have found) is that I need to 're-calibrate' - by this I mean that in the past things that I took a lot of joy from, going camping, going to the beach, watching movies with mates, etc. etc. don't strike as much enthusiasm in me. I allowed myself to get adjusted to such a big pace of life with interesting new things every day while I was overseas... now by comparison things seem a bit dull. I have a feeling that I need to go through a phase of feeling flat before I can get enthused about things that I used to really get enthused about.

That takes me to the next thing. I start work next week and will be flying out to a mine site to work for up to 10 days at a time. It is what is called FIFO - fly in, fly out and is going to be my new lifestyle for the next 12 months at least. Before I left I would have easily jumped into this without hesitation. Having been overseas and done so much travel though over the past year I really want to just stay in the one place. However, if you have read from the top you would see how much of a good opportunity this is for me and I really need to force myself through a bit of short term 'adjustment' pain. Had the travel not been on the cards for another 4 months or so I would probably have been itching to get out of here and on the road again but at the moment it just feels a bit soon. I have to admit I have felt a bit nervous about it.

As mentioned in one of the above links, don't throw yourself into 9-5 straight away. I haven't done this straight away, but I am as of next week going into working 10 hour shifts, in as much as 40 degree heat in the Aussie outback. That is going to be tough, here's hoping I am up to the challenge.

Unfortunately I have to agree with that. I find when I try to talk with people "back home" about my trips, they just don't get it. Their idea of an "adventure" is going to Disneyland or maybe Cancun, and the more exciting things I've done just don't register.

I tried to tell someone once about doing a motorcycle trip to the Grand Canyon and camping out in the desert. I spoke about how beautiful the canyon is, how much I saw and did, the interesting people I met, etc. The only question they had was "Ain't you afraid of SNAKES??" :rolleyes2:

[QUOTE=brclarke;402582]Unfortunately I have to agree with that. I find when I try to talk with people "back home" about my trips, they just don't get it.


I get it :clap::mchappy:

So here's an update on how things are going. I have been back home about 4 months now.

Job wise, things didn't work out with the drilling mud company, at least not for the moment. We lost a major investor in the startup and I was out spending a lot of time on site on drill rigs away from home, giving technical advice and working on the rig, rather than selling. This was good in ways, it got me out of the city and satisfied a little bit of itchiness I was getting from being at home too much, but being away again was also not as bad as I was expecting. Also it made me realise that I don't enjoy being in one place for too long any more so I need a job that gets me around if possible. Anyway, back on the job market now and in final interviews with some cool companies - one of which is open to me taking time out to travel again in the future - win, win!

The re-calibration that I was talking about in my last post. Well busting my ass on a drill rig, lifting drill pipes for 12 hours in 40 degree heat (thats celcius) for 14 days straight was probably one of the best things that happened to me since I got back for 're-calibration'. It got the sook out of me, you might say. Having not worked for over a year I had lost appreciation for my free time and for the smaller things in life. This certainly fixed that. As did another 14 day stint on a rig underground. I would highly recommend getting stuck into some hard physical work when you get back, it helped to put things back in perspective again. The first few days really sucked ass, I wasn't work fit and the days just went really slow, but after I got into the groove of it, it felt quite good. It might seem like it goes against the 'don't go straight back into 9-5 recommendation' however I found that because it was 14 on, 14 off, and it had an end in sight, it wasn't too bad.

I have had a bit of spare time since January as have really only been working the 14 day on 14 off stints. Keeping any routine has been hard as I come back from the rigs absolutely exhausted. However I have been going into dad's office every day and studying for 4 or 5 hours. Have worked through a whole book on drilling fluids, and finished a Chemistry 1 textbook, never realising how much I was actually interested in Chemistry. That has really helped keep me motivated and stop my mind from wandering too much.

I have stuck with the exercise routine and put back on a lot of the weight that I lost while overseas, I feel much healthier and stronger as a result. Went from 78kg pre-trip to 69kg post-trip. Now I am back up at 74kg, my diet is a lot healthier.

I don't really talk about the trip that much. I get the typical questions from people, "what is the best country?","what is the best thing you did?","what is the craziest thing that happened?" - to which my response is usually something along the lines of, there were so many experiences and I can't boil it down to one thing. Sure, I have a few little anecdotal stories that I can tell if there is a suitable segue and people are willing to hear it, but again I really try to avoid sounding like that person who knows it all because they have travelled. When it boils down to it, I can't succinctly explain the whole trip/experience in one bit sized, simple story, that can be told over a beer in a bar. I guess that in itself is the beauty of it, and stems back to the reason why you just have to do it for yourself, and nobody else, not to try and prove anything to anyone, just do it because you want to.

I turned 29 over the weekend, which is a birthday where everyone wants to tell you that it is only 1 year until you turn the 'big' 3-0. Had I wasted my 20's doing things that I didn't want to do, I guess I might be a little bit bothered that I am 1 year from 30. However, I had a dream, a goal to travel and see the world. I worked hard in a job that, whilst it wasn't my dream job, I wasn't treading water career-wise either. It helped me save enough money and head off on the motorbike and experience so much. At the moment, I feel a hell of a lot of contentment knowing that I just did what I wanted to do.