What I've Been Up to In June 2025
Weather... Work... Confusion...
This Summer has been quite confusing thus far in the Bay Area. Back in Spring we had a week or so of super warm days, and it felt like a long summer started early. Fast forward to actual Summer time now, and we are in our jackets, wondering if this is Autumn, or Spring? To be clear, I am not complaining. We are very fortunate not to be in the ‘heat dome’ or any other extreme patterns.
Other than the weather patterns, my work life balance seems to also be a confused state - but not in a bad way. I’ve actually been finding myself drawn to work more because I find myself enjoying the challenges, not because I need to fulfil a quota or a certain number of work hours. It surprised me since I haven’t felt this type of excitement for many years, and also I realized the time spent working subtly cannibalized the time blocks for my creative works.
Recognizing and acknowledging the issue is a good start to solving the problem - so one of my July goals is to re-gain this balance a bit… :)
Here are the things that kept me busy this past month, aside from the day-to-day ‘job’ related stuff…
Creating and hacking stuffs
Drawing
Weekly comics - the adventure of ‘Ant, Bot, and Cat’ is coming closer, and closer to its end… As usual, all previous strips are posted on all major social feeds, but of course, the best place to access this would be my (paid) Patreon page
Study drawings (#inktober52 ) - wow, got a zero/null/non/nada this month…
#FanArt - only one this month, but it’s special to me… from a cartoon / toy I enjoyed when I was very little…
Writing
“100 Drawings of Tang Dynasty Poems” (唐詩一百畫) - book 1: available as a hardcover on Amazon. Book 2 of this 3-part series is on-going! 😊
The pre-released drafts of this book are all available on my Patreon
Not much happened on my ‘short stories’ substack “Echo of the Worlds”.
Game Dev
Again, completely paused this month on development…
Still, feel free to play my game#1 Qin!
The Web
No updates (is a good update 😉)
Hacking
Resuming from last month’s adventure into i3wm, this month I played with Hyprland and various Display Engines and Windows Managers in Linux, to finally decide that I really just need GlazeWM + ZeBar on Windows and AeroSpace on MacOS!
Consuming Stuffs
Reading - still reading “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking" by Susan Cain.
Gaming - done with the main story and 80% of all areas on God of War :), also done with main story of Bioshock 2 - started DLC “Minerva’s Den”; continue to play Portal: Evolution and Crusader: No Regret
TV/Movies - Re-watched Rogue One (it's still sooo good); Predator: Killer of Killers (it's actually decent); Tales of the Underworld (Asajj Ventress is actually a character with interesting arcs) ; Archive (picked this up while watching a YT 'plot summary' video, I enjoyed it quite a bit, would give it 8/10!)
Learning: continuing French learning journey on Duolingo - I am now on a 90+ days streak… I just need to practice it during the daily life more :D
That’s it for this issue of my newsletter! If you really finished reading the above, I thank you, and wish that my sharing would either entertain you, or inspire you (if you’ve been thinking about your own creative projects).