The first month of the second half of the year is over. It brought some nice moments and some deeper thoughts.

July was, for most of the time, a warm month. Maybe too much. That always brings challenges in my life, the most impactful of them related to struggling to fall asleep in the heat. But the long days are also favorable for hiking and ranging farther from my home to use the daylight to the fullest.

I have managed four hikes, each a bit different. I’ll go into details in a separate post, but the second needs a mention for one reason: it was one I started to plan almost a year ago on request from some people in the hiking club and, instead of being solo or with family, was planned to be a small group of the most hardcore members of the hiking club. It was a test for me, to put things together on such a scale on my own and I admit the last days leading to it had me nervous. Right now, I can say it was successful, even though I’ve made some beginner’s mistakes that I need to learn from if I want to repeat something similar the next year. Given that the feedback was positive, I’m open to the possibility.

The hot days tend to make me indecisive, which impacted my reading habits. On my way from work, I tended to read random snippets of books I’ve read in the past before I pushed myself to pick something new to read. I managed one book half-way through the month and started the second in the series at the end of the month, still going with it as of today and hoping to finish it next week. The good part is that I’m getting back to reading at least to some degree.

I mentioned at the end of last month that I had some ideas that might help me sort out the issues with my lack of writing progress, and I managed to think through some of them, but putting them to (virtual) paper has yet to happen. Lately, I’ve been wondering whether my struggle to even get to writing might have a different reason than the issues I face with the story – that maybe it’s more likely caused by things caused by “adult life” that, on most days, simply leaves me too drained to have energy for creative pursuits.

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So, that’s a look back at the past month. I hope the current one will go well. There’s still a lot of summer left and places to see on my schedule. For now, I hope July was a good month for you and that August will be fine, too.