www.nickhodge.com

On Janu­ary 6^th this year, I had a small per­sonal cel­eb­ra­tion: my twen­ti­eth (20^th) year of full-time work. Whilst I am at my third employer, I’ve never had more than a day between jobs. (www.linkedin.com Pro­file: Nick Hodge) The longest hol­i­day I’ve had in last 20 years has been the month the Hodge fam­ily went to Europe (70 Days, 7 Coun­tries). Apart from that refresh, its been a week or two here and there.

Here I am, in my late thirties. A poten­tially jeop­ard­ous time for men. They do silly things like buy fast red sports cars (Scar­lett Comes out in Style). The body doesn’t look, feel and work the same old way. And they start to look ahead a little, and drive a little slower.

We are all bound by the decisions we make: what cars we drive, what houses to buy; what job to do; and fur­ther bound by expect­a­tions: what do people expect from me? Why do I have to get up every morn­ing and go to work? It leads a dif­fi­cult decision: “Can I get off this merry-go-round?”.

After weigh­ing up these conun­drums, I’ve decided to spend the next 5–6 months “reboot­ing”, “reset­ing” and “reload­ing”, pre­papring for the next 20 years. Slow down, smell the roses. Look back and look ahead. Read some books, learn some new things. Return to Adobe in a dif­fer­ent role. Calm down and get stuff done that mat­ters. And as Carl Sagan said to his stu­dents: “Do Some­thing” (Carl Sagan)

After a busy, full and fun 20 years — that “some­thing” remains equally as eth­er­eal, but I’ll be ready to tackle it head on.

Wel­come to Plan­et­Nick, Pop­u­la­tion: 1

First Cas­sette Album: Tim Finn, Escapade

First Vinyl Album: The Liv­ing Enz, Split Enz

First CD Album: Con­flict­ing Emo­tions, Split Enz

First iTunes Album: The Dark­ness, One Way Ticket To Hell … and Back

Update: now with pic­tures Class of 1985 Reunion. Class Reunions are a unqiue life exper­i­ence, a place to extin­guish regret.

For my first 9 years at school, I trav­elled in a yel­low school bus. The exact route changed from year to year from a short 30 minutes to a long, hot 1.5 hours. Hear­ing about this event Par­ents defend bus driver after preschool­ers locked in bus will give me night­mares, I am sure.

Image to left: Nick in snow of South Island, New Zea­l­and on Monday. Image to right: Nick on beach, Pacific Ocean at Punta Mita near Puerto Val­larta Mex­ico. Some­where 14000kms or so away is the snow in NZ. Is Nick a winter or sum­mer per­son? Your opin­ion counts, vote now! Read about it here: Christ­ch­urch II (5^th June to 8^th June) and Mex­ico (9^th June to 14th June)

Nick meets snow Christ­ch­urch II (5^th June to 8^th June).

Lit­eral Ground­hog Day in New Zealand.

Fly to Auck­land on 6.30pm flight Monday even­ing. Arrive at hotel at 12:45am. Up and awake at 6:00am for a 12 hour day of Acrobat 7.0 Road­show. Mid-afternoon, the Sky­city Con­ven­tion Centre is evac­u­ated after our room starts to fill with water and the fire alarms sound.

To the air­port, and attempt to be smart by catch­ing a 6:00pm flight to Wel­ling­ton. Take off OK, and almost arrive on Wel­ling­ton air­port. About 50m from the ground, land­ing is abor­ted due to weather and we’re off back to Auckland.

Arrive Auck­land 8:15pm, and placed on a res­ched­uled flight to Wel­ling­ton. Within 10 minutes, this flight is can­celled too. We’re groun­ded in Auck­land until the morning.

After some scram­bling, we find a hotel (of sorts) and check in at 10:30pm. After 2.5 hours of email and reports, sleep for 4 hours and awake at 5:30am for an 8:00am flight to Wellington.

At the air­port, and the 7:00am flight to Wel­ling­ton is still wait­ing for weather clear­ance in Wel­ling­ton. By 8:00am, we find out Wel­ling­ton air­port is closed until at least 4:00pm. Wel­ling­ton this New Zea­l­and trip is cancelled.

Three days, about 9 hours sleep.

Oh the glam­or­ous life in the Jet-set.

Tak­ing more Adobe people on a pil­grim­age to the west-coast shores out­side of Auck­land: Mark Szulc, Paul Steph­ens and Nick Hodge in New Zea­l­and. Pre­vi­ous trav­el­lers: Rus­sell Brown and Nick Hodge in New Zea­l­and and Tim Cole, Jane Brady and Nick Hodge in New Zealand