2025 Summer Solstice Update

by on 2025-07-31 | License Permalink

Well, another half-year! This update is very late at this point, as the Solstice is well in the past and we are well into the late summer.

I feel that the last six months have passed in five minutes and two years simultaneously. There have been weeks that felt like days, and weeks that felt like months.

Our Winter Solstice celebrations were beyond perfect, and we rode out the winter in a very cosy fashion. As winter gave way to the Spring/Early Summer, our daughter had her first birthday and I returned to work. She’s grown so much and I well up in tears at the beauty of watching her develop every day.

We’ve mostly been illness free, although there have been a few low days with some poorlies. We’ve been able to care for each other as a family and managed to avoid burnout for the most part.

Key Events

As with last update this section comes with the caveats that there are lots of things I didn’t log properly. D has already spoken her first words and been starting to work towards sentences, but this happened so gradually that it’s really tough to determine an actual date for them. Combined with the nature of raising your first child, all of the “firsts” come thick and fast, and it’s really tough to keep up with noting them down. Especially as I don’t use my smartphone much anymore.

These are the things I have dates for.

Hobbies

I’ve managed to touch on most of my hobbies over the last year, but not been able to go too deeply in any particular one. This suits me for now, but it’d be nice to wrangle either hiking or archery into something that I weave into my weekly or monthly rhythms.

Archery

Archery has once again fallen by the wayside as something that I only get to when I can, rather than manage to integrate into my daily life.

I have actually done some shooting this year. My coach P has been instrumental in helping me get to a point where I am done with the bow setup, as he showed me how to do a nocking point. So my bow is all set up, and the main blocker now is the time and effort it takes to cycle to the field and get set up to do some shooting. It’s a good position to be in.

Creative Writing

No creative writing to speak of this year so far. I started planning a few poems in my head but never got around to comitting them to paper.

I also did some worldbuilding for a setting I have in mind, but again nothing has been committed anywhere.

Exercise

This is holding steady and I have progressed in my pull-ups nicely.

Sickness has reared its head a few times, but we’ve mostly been OK since the Spring Equinox which has meant that I’ve had the time and space to exercise consistently and get stronger as a result.

I recovered slowly from my foot injury but I did recover. I still haven’t begun running yet – primarily because I’ve not felt the urge or a need for weight management. Ever since I recovered from my injury I’ve begun wearing my barefoot shoes as my everyday shoes and this has made a massive difference. My feet are thriving and are stronger than ever. They even look stronger than before. I think I’ll be set up for barefoot running when I want to return to running at some point before too long.

Hiking

I’ve done a bit of hiking, but nowhere near the amount I was doing across 2022 and 2023.

I’ve done a few hikes with A and D and a few friends. We revisited a few old favourite routes and did one or two new ones as well. Unfortunately, soon after we got back into the swing of it D started walking by herself which means she’s less enamored about being carried everywhere and now we are back to not being able to hike very far. This will change, but it’s something we have to accept for now.

I did do some hiking without my immediate family. The week before my I returned to work, D had her first full day at nursery which meant I had an entire day “to myself”. We made sure all my chores were done at home, so that I could leave for a day hike as soon as I dropped D off at nursery. I went to climb to Wether Cairn in The Cheviots and the weather was glorious. It was the first time I drove just myself to a hiking route, so was an emotional moment where I’d fulfilled a fantasy I’ve had since 2017.

I also dragged my “heart-sister”, K, on a hike for my “stag-don’t” in May. This was a shorter hike scaled to ensure we prioritised comfort and cosiness rather than an epic hike, but it was in one of my favourite parts of the North East.

I’m pretty happy about the presence of hiking so far in 2025, especially compared to last year.

Languages

I’m letting my language brain have a bit of a rest at the moment, as I’m at a very comfortable level in Esperanto and I’ve not got an immediate urge to learn another language.

My friend M and I have started our informal Esperanto club. It currently consists of a monthly call on a weekday lunchtime, where we just chat about our lives, GNU/Linux, and about our Esperanto learning.

I also received an email from a Canadian Esperantist who found my site! This was a very pleasant and humbling experience as I never actually imagine anyone reading my site. We exchanged a few emails back and forth in Esperanto and they recommended me some books to read. Which is very timely, because I’ve finally finished my read-through of The Wheel of Time and that means I can read some Esperanto literature soon.

Logs

Albums

Lots of old faves here, with some novelty albums and some nostalgia trips. However I hope it comes through that there’s a whole bunch of new listens here as I’ve made a concerted effort to expand my horizons.

The main standout for me was being late to the party with discovering Lorna Shore and their album Pain Remains. I actually discovered them through connecting some dots watching YouTube reaction videos[^lorna-shore] which resulted in my wife walking in on me crying to the music videos of Pain Remains. A few days later, I got her to watch them and she ended up crying as well. I now own digital and vinyl copies of Pain Remains, and the whole thing kicked off a binge into Deathcore for me. I’ve really enjoyed that binge, and I’ve listend to Pain Remains several times a week since I discovered it. It’s definitely shot up to be one of my favourite albums of all time.

My discovery of “deathcore” also lead me to explore the roots of the genre in metalcore and hardcore punk. I am familiar with metalcore, having developed my music taste in the 2000s when metalcore was kicking off; but I’ve never explored punk at all. I started with Black Flag because my old driving instructor had their albums and lent me them. I enjoy it, but I’m still forming my opinion on hardcore punk as a genre. I need to do more diving.

I’ve also started tip-toeing around listening to more hip-hop. There’s some incredible lyricism and musicianship in the hip-hop world that I’m just totally unaware of, and I want to amend that. This might turn into a binge at a later date, but for now I’m just feeling my way around the shape of the genre as it’s as nuanced and rich — if not more so — as rock and metal.

Finally, there’s a few pop albums thrown in there for good measure. I have a USB optical drive now, and access to charity shops which means that I’ll be adding the odd pop album to my datahoard semi-regularly from now on.

Books

This half year was dominated by my readthrough of the Wheel of Time books, and it reflects in the number of books I read. These are large books, and despite the prose being very drinkable they can be a lot to get through. This was my third time reading books 1–10, but my first time from book 11 onwards.

I first read Wheel of Time as a young teen, between the ages of 13 and 14 I think. At this point, book 11 hadn’t been published and I believed that there were only 10 books in the series. I was a bit confused at the end of Book 10 because there wasn’t a resolution, and by the time book 11 came out I struggled to get started because I’d forgotten a lot of the plot points and non-primary characters.

My second attempt was about ten years ago now, and I once again made it to the tenth book before I gave up or got distracted.

This time, I had originally planned to read through three or four of these books at at a time before throwing in a palette cleanser but I didn’t end up doing that for several reasons. I didn’t feel the need for one at all during the early books; it was compelling enough to keep me going. I definitely noticed “The Slog” this time, though. However the trouble with this portion is that I’d trudge through the meat of each book and then be compelled enough by the conclusion to pick up the next one! At the end, I just accepted that I was binging the books in order, with a slight detour to read some non-fiction Marxist literature that I’d been meaning to get to for a while.

So, what did I reckon on The Wheel of Time? It definitely shows its age now. It’s still an admirable work in terms of scope and ambition, it’s got interesting lands with believable history and cultures; but compared to fresher takes on Fantasy such as those by Brandon Sanderson or Robin Hobb, it felt a bit cringey in places for me this time through. The gender essentialism was palpable, and it became very clear that Robert Jordan had some form of spanking fetish partway through the series. The descriptions of women characters basically amounted to how pretty they were, and Jordan was pretty transparent about what traits and body types he found particularly attractive.

Lots of others have written much more elegant and thorough critiques of Jordan’s writing in The Wheel of Time, which I encourage you to read as I don’t want to bloat my Solstice update with them. Suffice it to say, I was pretty glad when Brandon Sanderson took over writing the later books and downplayed a lot of that stuff. There are other critiques that can be levied at the later books, and some of the plot points felt rushed and hadn’t been built up appropriately – however I think that was more a result of the circumstances surrounding Jordan’s death and the pressures Sanderson was under to finish the series in time while hitting all the notes that Jordan had planned for the end of the series.

My conclusion is that I’m glad I did this, it’s scratched a 15+ year itch to finish the series and I got a lot from it. I don’t think I’ll be reading through the series again any time soon. Maybe once more before I’m too old to finish it again, for old times’ sake; but there’s too many other books to read first. I also probably won’t recommend the series to anyone who’s not already a fantasty fan and who can grit their teeth through the problems I note above.

After I was done, I refreshed myself with reading The Martian, which was absolutely delightful. I loved every page, and stayed up past my bedtime to read it on both nights I was reading it. Whoops.

Movies

Wow, I actually managed to watch movies!! This has been due to a variety of factors: D is sleeping for longer stretches now which gives A and I a change to watch the occasional movie together; A sometimes takes D for a sleepover at my mother-in-law’s house, which gives me an evening to watch a movie in; and I started watching movies on Friday nights which aligned with training days since I had already exercised and thus didn’t need to be up so early in the morning.

Some absolute gems here, both in terms of really cool clever films as well as just fun. Some standouts for me were (in no order, and for different reasons) The Northman, Wet Hot American Summer, The Beach Bum, and Companion.