Turning 42; life as a 41-year-old

By month

Text from sketch

41-42 2025-08-03-08

A+'s independence, W-'s retirement, playdates, health challenges, video games, learning

Aug 2024: Room swap, biking, paths diverging
Sept: Coding, bike adventures, post owls
Oct: sketchnotes, family: lung mets, CCAT
Nov: No school exemption, micro:bit, skating playdate, new desk
Dec: EmacsConf, skating, W-'s retirement
Jan 2025: EmacsConf, emacs.tv, skating, visited family at the hospital
Feb: iPad (drawing, reading, music, photos), sled, skating party
March: Cubing comp, skating, pottery wheel
April: Minecraft, Bike Brigade, aquarium
May: S'mores, Stardew Valley, sewing, Bike Brigade newsletter, virtual > gifted
June: Finished virtual grade 3, sewing, potato prints, sick
July: Swimming, splash pad playdates, LEGO Mindstorms, Spike Prime, Stardew Valley Expanded

Looking at the year as a whole, I can see a number of themes.

A+'s growing independence

Last year, I wrote that even as A+ grows more independent, I want to be around to spend more time with her if she wants to. I clocked less time doing childcare this year, but I think we went to more places, and there's more richness to the time we spend together. I'm learning to fret less and trust more, and this is good. We're figuring out how this might work going forward as she continues to individuate.

Exclamations of "I'm bored" have reduced slightly, although they occasionally still happen if she's tired or off-balance. She's mostly figured out how to independently explore her interests, although she still likes to spend lots of time with me. I only occasionally fret about A+ and independent time (which often involves screens). She's curious, likes to think about and apply what she's learning, and is often eager to help out around the house or go outside and play with friends.

Sometimes I have a little time to think. I'm not used to this yet and the words don't flow easily (do they ever?), but it's promising.

Sometimes it's still a challenge to get myself into the right frame of mind to fully appreciate when she wants to spend time with me. Sometimes I just want to be able to write or focus. As we like to remind ourselves, though, this time with each other is a limited time offer.

It feels like we're starting to see the results of so many little experiments accumulating over the years. I like who we are now, and what I think we're growing towards. A+ generally considers things carefully and is getting the hang of making her own decisions, knowing her own self.

My little tweaks and processes have gotten me through the worst of the early-parenting time crunch, I think, so I may have a bit of runway before health constraints kick in. As I develop my own interests, I'll probably dial down writing about life with A+, to give her the space and privacy to figure herself out. I'm looking forward to deepening the things I've been learning from these parenting and tech journeys. Life's not ideal, but it is what it is.

I'm learning more about supporting A+. This was the first year we weren't approved for any exemptions from synchronous learning, so A+ had to be in virtual grade 3 from start to finish. She was bored waiting for the class to get through lessons, and the drain of managing her boredom often resulted in resistance to doing the work in the 5- or 10-minute segments the teacher allocated during classtime. She completed pretty much all of it after class, although a few things ended up being turned in late or couldn't be done because she didn't have the information discussed in class.

Contrary to my short-term anxieties around trying to get her to do the work, it turned out that backing off was better for all of us. Even with the growing pains and the occasional questionable decision, it's better for her to learn how to learn than for me to try to push, push, push. I experimented with scheduling my fretting for Saturdays, which worked surprisingly well. This gave her space to own her learning and manage things herself. W- and A+ helped remind me whenever I started fretting unnecessarily. Transforming that nervous energy into silliness seemed to help, too.

I think school is going to be a little tricky for A+ as she's outside the normal range. Special support is only offered in in-person schools, though, so we'll just have to figure out how to make the most of virtual school for now. That might mean letting her figure out what level of attention she wants to pay when, and how to find things to enjoy while not going crazy. We tweaked our physical space by swapping rooms so that she got the one with more sunlight, floor space, and a desk by the window. That way, even with longer days in front of a screen, she could still get a bit more light. I occasionally took her out of school for informal field trips to the art gallery or museum, or to afternoon playdates with her friends. It helped break up the tedium, and that sort of learning is important too.

There were plenty of opportunities for her to practise independence at playdates after school: skating in winter, biking in the spring and fall, splash pads and pools as the weather warmed up. She took on the responsibility of packing her own clothes and snacks. With a walkie-talkie in her basket, she biked ahead to nearby playdates and nature club meetings. I was around in case she needed me to hover, like when there were little kids who were too young to be reasoned with but who were used to reading an adult's expressions.

A+ figured out her own step-by-step progression for the milestones she wanted to work on: first the corner store, then the farmers market, then the supermarket. I sewed A+ a canvas bag with a pocket for her purse so that she could buy her own snacks. She was interested in swimming and pottery wheels, so I signed her up for classes and stayed on the far side of the pool or pottery studio. I stepped back as she struggled with some social interactions and figured out what felt right to her in others. When she wanted to dress like me, I sewed us matching swimwear and skirts. When she was grumpy with me, W- tagged in, or we let her cool herself down while I went off to explore my own interests.

I think this is the way to go for us. Closeness when she wants closeness, space when she wants space. People learn how to decide by deciding, so it's good for her to experiment with decisions while the stakes are low. She's beginning to figure herself out. I still worry a little, of course, but that's part of life. She's curious, and I enjoy learning along with her. I love our late-night conversations about all sorts of things. (Last night we talked about wired telephone exchanges and cellular networks.)

More time with W- because of retirement

W- retired in December to spend more time with us and explore his own interests. He'd been planning it for a while, and the transition was smooth. Some afternoons, he volunteered with Bike Brigade, delivering hampers from food banks to people with mobility issues and other challenges. It's a good way to stay active and to connect with other people. He even cycled through snow and rain. A+ and I sometimes tagged along on W-'s deliveries when the weather was pleasant. My cargo bike made it easy to take A+ and her bike downtown. At the pickup point, I unlatched her bike, she transferred some of the groceries to her basket, and she biked between us to the recipient. She often carried the groceries up with W- while I stayed outside to watch the bikes. It was a little harder for A+ and I to commit to getting out of the house for a scheduled delivery, so I helped out in other ways like handling the newsletter, since that was something I could do on a more flexible schedule. I like how it gives all of us different ways to contribute.

We also went on family adventures to parks and playgrounds that were a little further from the house. With our e-bikes, it was easy to take the Martin Goodman Trail downtown to explore places we hadn't been. It was nice sharing those moments with W-.

More predictable focus time

Going to virtual school meant that A+ had a more predictable schedule that often gave me hour-long chunks of focus time. Because W- was around in case A+ needed help, that meant I could occasionally head out of the house for long morning walks and the occasional bike errand. Knowing the schedule also meant that I could plan a few tasks on my list, make reasonable progress on them, and wrap up neatly before recess or lunch, which was a wonderful feeling. I even felt comfortable using some of that potential focus time for playing the piano, writing, drawing, reading, and playing games.

We planned to keep things mostly the same, so I wasn't under any pressure to increase my consulting. I was still the primary caregiver, taking A+ to playdates, giving her hugs throughout the day, snuggling her when she needed emotional first aid.

We are slowly entering the phase of spending time doing separate things, coming together, splitting up again, coming together. Sometimes A+'s happy to spend time on her own, imagining stories, playing Minecraft, or reading the Star Wars or Stardew Valley wikis. It feels odd shifting to not knowing what she's doing for a few hours at a time. I'm reminded of how some families keep screens in common areas for easier checking-on. At the same time, she's got a good head on her shoulders. We're comfortable talking about things and have talked about a few things to watch out for (people can be quite weird on the Internet). I trust her with managing things during the virtual school day. So why not summer mornings too? In the afternoon, she often takes the initiative to suggest a park to go to or friends to reach out to for a playdate. That makes it a little easier for me to be less anxious about screentime. There are still plenty of moments when she's all over me ("Mama concentration detected!"), and it's easier to set aside what I'd been working on knowing that there'll be time to pick it up again.

Emacs

All the work I put into automating EmacsConf in previous years continues to pay off. I extracted repeatable processes from each year's organizers' notebook (2024, 2023, etc.) into our general organizers' notebook. I had more time to help with captions before the conference, and I even got to enjoy listening to a few sessions and take notes.

With all these interesting videos about Emacs, I wanted to help build an index like the one for Ruby videos. Alvaro Ramirez set up emacs.tv, and I started indexing videos as part of my Emacs News collection process. It's been fun occasionally watching random Emacs videos in the background.

One-hour chunks of focus time feel too short to schedule a call like the Emacs Chats I used to do, but 1-minute videos might be doable. The videos I made feel a little too fast to be generally useful for covering personal workflows (blink and you'll miss it), but maybe if I scope it down, that might be good to experiment with again.

Drawing

I got a 13" iPad Air because I thought it would be fun to do some digital drawing and painting along with A+, who likes to draw on hers. I sometimes draw along with A+ when she's doing art assignments, especially when I pull her out of school for an informal field trip to the Art Gallery of Ontario. I think company helps.

We tried the Simply Draw tutorials too, although she was only interested in the colour tutorials and she ran out of things to do there. I made a bit more progress and I liked what I drew. I eventually got a little frustrated with their drawing interface, which sometimes forgot what I had drawn. I wonder if they've already fixed that bug. I haven't figured out a better way to go through the tutorials while drawing in Procreate. Maybe I should revisit this sometime.

In the meantime, I've been doing a fair bit of sketching in Noteful: daily moments, monthly reviews, this yearly review, doodles for my blog posts, and even the occasional visual book notes. Compared to the Supernote A5X, it's nice to actually be able to see the colours, and I like how I can select a line and change its style. I still draw with a limited palette of colours: black, a yellowish highlighter, maybe gray. I used to draw with more colours. It feels a little indulgent to spend extra time playing with colour, but maybe I'll get better at doing it just for fun.

Piano

A+ likes to sing. I think it might be fun to learn how to accompany her on the piano. Making music is also a different way of enjoying it. I think that might be a good long-term interest. I subscribed to Simply Piano because I like the way the scrolling notes help me learn timing without counting. I tend to forget that when it comes to sheet music. It's an expensive subscription, but it would be hard to fit sessions with a real-life piano teacher into my life anyhow. I like how I can squeeze in half an hour to play on the piano wherever the day allows. I mostly practise in the morning because we hang out in the living room in the evening. I bought a MIDI to USB cable so that I could plug the piano into the iPad for more accurate tracking and the occasional quiet headphones practice session. It's a little rough feeling the limitations of my memory and my ability to get my fingers to do what I want them to do. Nice to make progress, though. I'm about halfway through the Pre-Advanced III lesson in Simply Piano, which is still probably more of a beginner-level thing compared to what other people can do. (And that's fine; it's good to have interests with high ceilings.) Once I'm done with Simply Piano's course, I might check out Piano Marvel or Pianote.

Gardening

I have a pretty consistent morning routine that includes watering the plants, but the heat makes it less enjoyable to spend time weeding. The cherry tomatoes are doing well. The bitter melons are a lot slower than last year, and their leaves are yellowing. The lettuce bolted before I got around to doing much with it. The perilla is fine, though, and we enjoyed that with some lettuce rolls. The dahlias are browning. I'm not sure if I've been overwatering them or they're having a hard time with the heat. The front garden has been getting quite straggly. Maybe next year, we'll add a lot more compost to the garden and get fresh potting mix for the containers.

I haven't quite found my groove as a gardener, but it's reassuring to see that some things are still going on in the garden despite my neglect. There are lots of things going on in my life right now, so nature mostly does what it does.

Fun

A+ and I have been playing more video games together. We had fun learning more about Minecraft parkour together thanks to the excellent (and free!) maps from Hielke, which include a training mode. She's excited about the recent developments in Minecraft Bedrock Preview, especially the copper golem and the shelves. We also enjoyed exploring various Minecraft worlds together, like Witchcraft and Wizardry (a free fan-built Harry Potter world) and Path of the Jedi. I set up Syncthing on her computer so that her GDLauncher instances are automatically copied over to my computer, which is very handy for picking up the mod list for the Minecraft Java instances she likes to experiment with. I enjoy learning more about Create mod contraptions.

She was curious about farming sims, so we all picked up Stardew Valley. I like Stardew Valley a lot. It fits the way my brain works. I like planting crops, mining, and working on quests. A+ enjoys developing friendships in the game, and she's slowly becoming more comfortable with other aspects like fishing. We have a playthrough with the Stardew Valley Expanded and Ridgeside Village mods, and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface.

I love that both Minecraft and Stardew Valley have deep, long-term communities. Sometimes A+ feels that most of the kids in the playgroup like to run around playing shrieky games like tag or grounders, and talk over each other in conversations, and are not that interested in conversations about Ahsoka Tano's lightsaber forms or Anakin's descent into the Dark Side. She'll find her tribe someday.

In the meantime, I'm happy to have fun with A+. This year, we enjoyed swimming, spinning poi, biking, and singing. On days we don't have playdates, we sometimes go on bike adventures. It's nice to share these things with her while she wants to spend time with me.

I've been able to have more fun on my own, too. I changed my morning routine to include some piano practice, which is this interesting combination of feeling my brain struggle with learning something and being satisfied when I do get the hang of it.

Health

Fun is harder to enjoy when there are health challenges, though. This year was really tough for many people I care about. I only had to deal with minor hiccups like the dry eyes or the cough I had to deal with for about a month - not COVID according to the at-home tests I took, but still a reminder that even our precautions aren't 100%. Other people I cared about had it worse. One had COVID and was out of commission for a couple of weeks. One had a stroke which was luckily caught early enough for treatment. Another's cancer came back, this time metastasizing to her lungs. The cancer's currently responding to chemotherapy, but it's a lot harder to deal with something you can't cut out. Another continues to struggle with physical and cognitive decline. It's hard to watch them go through it and not be able to do anything. And then there's the world. This summer, the new normal includes heat waves and poor air quality due to wildfire smoke, and the world has taken a decidedly less optimistic turn.

All we can do is just keep taking care of what we can take care of, one day at a time. Watching other people go through health challenges I couldn't do anything about, I felt even more determined to savour the time we do have.

Time capsule

One of the nice things about having so many years of annual reviews is that I can quickly step back into what it was like back then. How did things work out? What might I have forgotten along the way that would be good to revisit?

In 2005, I had just moved to Canada. I was anxious about graduate school and figuring out a topic for my research, but determined to learn so that I could go back to the Philippines and teach computer science. I initially wanted to focus my research on personal information management practices and people's Emacs customizations, but the researcher who was probably most related to that had moved to a different university, so I was looking around for another topic that my supervisor could approve.

Twenty years later, I'm still in Canada. With A+, I've developed a deep appreciation for public libraries, playgrounds, and healthcare. I sometimes feel like I haven't done much with my master's degree, but then again, when I did my research into enterprise-based social computing, it was just at the right moment to be part of something interesting at IBM. I rode that wave for a number of years as part of my career, and even into consulting. So that's probably all right, even though it's been years since I've applied the things I learned in my statistics course. My thesis remains obscure, and that's okay. Maybe someday I'll do something like what Karl Voit does with his personal information management lecture. On the other hand, it's nice to be able to write about stuff without having to mark homework… Anyway, not for now, but maybe someday.

In 2010, I enjoyed working at IBM building websites for charitable causes and facilitating large-scale brainstorming discussions. Compared to then, I'm less professionally engaged. I have fun working on little prototypes for my consulting client, but I've definitely taken a step back so that I can have a more relaxed lifestyle with A+. I kinda miss working with the kinds of teams I got to work with back then, but what I've got now is also awesome.

Also, back then, I was about to marry W-. I continue to be very happy about that decision.

In 2015, I reduced my consulting time to one day a week and shifted more time towards personal interests. I also shifted from hosting get-togethers to hanging out at Hacklab. It was lots of fun experimenting with laser cutting and sewing. I dealt with pregnancy fatigue by becoming more of a hermit, lowering my expectations, and learning how to collect fragmented thoughts. W- and I played a lot of Borderlands 2 in the evenings.

People continue to do interesting things at Hacklab, although they've moved to a new venue since then. It'll probably be a while before I can wander over and hang out, since A+ still really enjoys my company.

In 2020, COVID reshaped our world. We had plenty of fun at home. A+ grew and grew: reading, biking, pretend. I'm surprised I managed to do some technical stuff too. I made a font, added features to my journaling system, helped organize EmacsConf.

Compared to then, I feel like I haven't been working on as many projects. I'm sure I'll have more time as A+ develops independent interests.

Looking ahead

I wonder what things will be like in a year, in five years, in ten years. I think things are going to be harder, not easier. I want to use this time to store up good memories and prepare for the storm. I want to keep developing relationships, playfulness, and practical life skills. I want to stay flexible and practise acceptance. There will likely be some tough decisions in my near future. It sucks, but other people have made it through before, and we can too.

Bright spots: I get to learn and grow together with A+ and W-. It'll be interesting to see how A+ continues to grow more independent in this dance of closeness and space.

I just need to keep focusing on doing what we can. That starts with checking in with myself to make sure I'm sleeping well, eating well, taking care of myself, and figuring out what's my responsibility and what belongs to other people. Then I can try to do my best for my circle of influence, and hope that ripples outwards.

I'm probably going to be circling around these questions:

How can I get better at supporting A+ when she wants help and step back when she wants to try things on her own?
How can I get better at managing myself so that I can enjoy the time she wants to spend with me and pounce on the opportunities to do my own things when she wants to be independent?
What do I really value, and what am I willing to sacrifice?
What's in my control? What can I influence? What's outside both?

Appendix A: Blog posts

Aside from Emacs news, I wrote 147 posts last year, compared to 63 the previous year and 52 the year before that. It was nice being able to set aside more writing time during the schoolyear. At the moment, I don't have much time for thinking aside from the snippets I can squeeze in here and there. I just have to keep saving ideas.

I also started making topic pages, which are undated notes that are more like a digital garden: Blogroll - Emacs - Emacsconf - Emacs Lisp - Inspiration - My everyday carry - Now - Org Mode - Personal knowledge management - Questions - Subed - Supernote - Uses - Visual book notes - Workflows - Yearly reviews

Appendix B: Sketches

Appendix C: Time

Category	The other year %	Last year %	Diff %	h/wk	Diff h/wk
Discretionary - Productive	7.4	12.6	5.2	21.1	8.7
Discretionary - Play	0.8	3.0	2.3	5.1	3.9
Unpaid work	4.0	4.2	0.2	7.0	0.3
Personal	9.3	9.2	-0.2	15.3	-0.3
Discretionary - Family	0.7	0.3	-0.4	0.5	-0.6
Business	3.4	2.2	-1.2	3.7	-2.0
Sleep	34.6	33.4	-1.2	55.9	-2.0
A+	39.9	35.2	-4.7	58.9	-7.9

Appendix D: Biking

One of the things that has helped with both health and enjoying time with A+ has been the cargo bike. From Aug 2024 to July 2025, I biked 1795 km (avg 150 km/month), compared to 1154 km from Nov 2023-July 2024 (avg 128 km/month). It's been really nice being able to go places on our own, especially as very few people mask on public transit these days. I usually take A+ in the cargo bike both ways, although sometimes she'll bike to the place and ride in the cargo bike on the way home. I use the Bakkie bag to tow her bike back home.

Javascript code for extracting distances and times from ebike-connect via Spookfox

[...document.querySelectorAll('.activities__ride-menu')].map((o) => {
  return {
    date: o.querySelector('.activities__menu-details > span').textContent,
    distance: o.querySelector('.activities__menu-distance-text').textContent.trim(),
    time: o.querySelector('.activities__menu-details > span:nth-child(2) > span:nth-child(2)').textContent,
  }
});

Emacs Lisp to group distance by month

(let ((by-month (seq-group-by
  (lambda (row)
    (let ((date (plist-get row :date)))
      (when (string-match "[0-9][0-9]\\.\\([0-9][0-9]\\)\\.\\([0-9][0-9]\\) [0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9]"
                          date)
        (format "20%s-%s-01"
                (match-string 2 date)
                (match-string 1 date)))))
  trips)))
  (append
   '(("Month" "Distance (km)")
     hline)
   (mapcar
    (lambda (row)
      (list (format-time-string "%Y-%m" (date-to-time (car row)))
            (format
             "%d"
             (round (apply '+
                           (mapcar (lambda (entry) (string-to-number (plist-get entry :distance)))
                                   (cdr row)))))))
    (reverse by-month))))

Data by month

Month	Distance (km)
2023-11	208
2023-12	157
2024-01	69
2024-02	78
2024-03	176
2024-04	82
2024-05	106
2024-06	143
2024-07	135
2024-08	96
2024-09	212
2024-10	120
2024-11	144
2024-12	235
2025-01	27
2025-02	60
2025-03	97
2025-04	133
2025-05	200
2025-06	158
2025-07	313
2025-08	101

Code for graphing

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
TEXT_COLOR = "black"
data_dict = {}
for row in by_month:
    data_dict[row[0]] = int(row[1])

months = ['Aug', 'Sept', 'Oct', 'Nov', 'Dec', 'Jan', 'Feb', 'March', 'April', 'May', 'June', 'July']
data = {}
base_year = 2023
for start_year in [base_year, base_year + 1]:
    data[start_year] = {'data': [], 'label': '%d-%d' % (start_year, start_year + 1), 'total': 0};
    for month_num in ['08', '09', '10', '11', '12', '01', '02', '03', '04', '05', '06', '07']:
        if month_num < '08':
            key = '%d-%s' % (start_year + 1, month_num)
        else:
            key = '%d-%s' % (start_year, month_num)
        data[start_year]['data'].append(data_dict.get(key, None))
        data[start_year]['total'] += data_dict.get(key, 0)
plt.figure(figsize=(12, 8))
x_positions = range(len(months))
marker_styles = '>^+*'

import itertools
marker = itertools.cycle(('o', '>', ',', '+', '.', '*'))
for key, val in enumerate(data):
    line = plt.plot(x_positions, data[val]['data'],
                    marker=next(marker), linewidth=2, markersize=8,
                    label=f'{data[val]['label']} (total: {data[val]['total']} km)')
    for i, val1 in enumerate(data[val]['data']):
        if val1:
            plt.annotate(val1, (i, val1), textcoords="offset points",
                         xytext=(0,10), ha='center', fontsize=9, color=TEXT_COLOR)
plt.xlabel('Month', fontsize=12, color=TEXT_COLOR)
plt.ylabel('Distance (km)', fontsize=12, color=TEXT_COLOR)
plt.title('Biking by month', fontsize=14, fontweight='bold', color=TEXT_COLOR)
plt.xticks(x_positions, months, color=TEXT_COLOR)
plt.yticks(color=TEXT_COLOR)
plt.legend(fontsize=11, labelcolor=TEXT_COLOR)
plt.grid(True, alpha=0.3)
plt.tight_layout()
plt.savefig('biking_comparison.svg', dpi=300, bbox_inches='tight')
return 'biking_comparison.svg'