October was tougher than usual, which really underscored how important health is. It was a lot to deal with, so we shuffled our priorities and lowered expectations. Things seem to have mostly settled down to a manageable new normal.

Fortunately, I was still able to focus on my client's time-sensitive event even when things were a little haywire. I'm glad I could solve their last-minute problem and work on some of their requests. Things are settling down now, but I'm probably not going to get much consulting done this month since I'm getting ready for EmacsConf in November. This is a pretty normal pattern now, so I know that putting off some requests for a while will be fine.

On the plus side, it was a good push to make a few changes. I started an exercise habit (13 days out of 31, 42%) following beginner workout videos on YouTube. I also made an effort to get out for a walk more often (20/31 days, 65%) to help with anxiety. I explored more of my thoughts and worries with journal entries, drawings, and the occasional blog post.

While I was pulling back and focusing on my hierarchy of needs, I wanted to make sure A+ also had resources for handling her big feelings. I set up Messenger Kids and Stars App on an old Android phone so that A+ could connect with her aunts and sisters without needing to go through me. We also subscribed to Minecraft Realms again so that they could play together. It's really nice overhearing them chat. It's important for A+ to have trusted people she can talk to, especially when she's grumpy with me.

We experimented with 1-on-1 gymnastics classes for A+. She's been asking about taking gymnastics for a while. I figured 1-on-1 can reduce the COVID risks. She can slow down the pace to be manageable even with a mask. Besides, she likes being able to talk with the teacher. She enjoys the classes. It's nice seeing her work hard and learn to tune into her body.

Piano-wise, I've been working on "In the Hall of the Mountain King." I can occasionally play the Simply Piano pre-advanced-level arrangement at full tempo with almost all the notes. My fingers still seize up from time to time, and I still forget to breathe. I'll get the hang of things someday.

I've been working on learning French. A+ is taking it in school, and languages are easier to learn if you can use it with people you like. I want to be able to use it with W- and A+. I also want to be able to take advantage of all the reading material around me.

A+'s current focus is KPop Demon Hunters. We've watched it several times, and we often sing the songs from the movie. Fortunately, she still had her heart set on dressing up as Elphaba for Halloween, so I didn't need to scramble a last-minute Rumi costume. I carved a pumpkin to look like Derpy the Tiger from KPop Demon Hunters. A+ proudly handed out candy and erasers to the early trick-or-treaters. When it got a bit darker, we put away the candy and I took her for a walk up and down the street. Then she handed out more candy. When she got cold and tired, I took over giving out candy. We ended up giving away almost 1,200 pieces.

So it was a pretty busy month.

Next month:

• I'm experimenting with having a French tutor. I'd like to be able to speak and understand French, so a tutor can help with that. I've also been working on drawing and writing journal entries in French, and recording pronunciations.
• We're experimenting with art classes for A+. One of her friends is taking it too. That way, she can have fun with art outside a school environment. Maybe that'll help sneak in some creative expression, fine motor skills, and frustration tolerance while she's having fun.
• I want to continue backing off and letting A+ handle her schoolwork more independently. We'll be getting the first report card soon, so that'll give her some feedback on how things are going.
• It's the last month before EmacsConf, so I need to get things ready. Looks like everyone's busy, so if it ends up being more of a casual hangout, that's totally okay too.
• It's getting colder and A+'s friends are starting to move to more indoor playdates, so I think it'll be a little more challenging to spend time with them and to get the 2-3 hours that the ophthalmologist keeps emphasizing. Ah well.

Blog posts

• Writing:
  • Connecting ideas
• Drawing:
  • Drawing trees
  • Doodling icons in a grid
• Emacs:
  • Added multiple timezone support to casual-timezone-planner
  • Playing around with org-db-v3 and consult: vector search of my blog post Org files, with previews
  • consult + org-db-v3: Approximate search of my sketches using text, and a multi-source consult command for approximately searching sketches and blog posts
• Life:
  • Slowing down and figuring out my anxiety
  • September 2025: school, playdates, coding, drawing
• Emacs News:
  • 2025-10-06 Emacs news
  • 2025-10-13 Emacs news
  • 2025-10-20 Emacs news
  • 2025-10-27 Emacs news

Sketches

• 2025-10-01-01 Inktober 2025 – drawing icons.jpeg
• 2025-10-01-02 Inktober52 2024 – drawing icons.jpeg
• 2025-10-02-04 From "How to Draw Almost Every Day" (Kamo) – drawing icons.jpeg
• 2025-10-02-05 From "How to Draw Almost Every Day" (Kamo) p46-61 – drawing icons.jpeg
• 2025-10-04-01 Drawing practice – drawing icons.jpeg
• 2025-10-17-07 How to get your teenager out of their bedroom – parenting puberty visual-book-notes.jpeg
• 2025-10-20-07 Trees – drawing icons.jpeg
• 2025-10-22-06 From "How to Draw Almost Every Day" - Kamo, p62-75 – drawing icons.jpeg
• 2025-10-28-04 From "Draw with Art Hub: Cute and Funny Foods" – drawing icons.jpeg
• 2025-10-31-02 Cozytober 2025 from @rubywenttospace – drawing icons.jpeg
• 2025-10-31-07 October 2025 – monthly review.jpeg

Time

• Exercise habit, yay!
• Some untracked time just defaulting to the Personal - Routines category.
• I spent less time consulting now that we've gotten past the scheduled event.
• I slept an average of 8.2 hours a night, which is good. I know my brain has a hard time when I'm low on sleep, so I prioritize it when things are dicey.
• I spent less time drawing, writing, and tinkering with Emacs, but maybe I'll get back to more of those things as life settles down.

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

School: A+ started virtual grade 4. After we figured out that we needed to check Google Classroom instead of Brightspace for assignments, she was able to catch up with her homework. She often complains of boredom, but that's expected. Sometimes she tries the extra math topics I introduce. In general, though, she'd rather have the slack time to explore her own interests instead of doing more of the same. Totally understandable. I'll read through the CEMC math problems anyway so that I can keep some of them in my back pocket.

Play: Most days, we made it out to the playground after school. A+ had lots of fun playing with her closest friends, and she was also fine hanging out with me whenever they were playing a game she wasn't keen on. Sometimes we'd do math while waiting: algebra, binary conversion, geometry.

Independence: For my part, I think I've managed to mostly wrangle my school-related anxiety back to the occasional weekend check-in. It helps to remind myself that it's a good way for her to practise making her own decisions in a low-stakes environment: what to do when, what kinds of breaks to take in between. Better to try things and possibly run into things she needs to figure out or get help with now than wait until university. The more I step back, the more I can appreciate how she's growing: getting stuff done during class time, stepping outside to self-regulate when a party's getting too noisy for her. Compared to last year, it's much easier for me to say, "All right, you're in charge. I haven't even checked what's due when. What do you want to work on first, and do you want any help from me?" Usually all the help she wants is hugs, although sometimes I still type what she dictates when the assignment is really boring. It's nice that she can tell me what she wants. I also like seeing that carry over into her social life at the playground. She can think ahead about potential reasons for conflict and stick up for herself when her predictions come true. She enjoyed expanding her emergency kit to cover more scenarios, and it was great to see her satisfaction when the pencil and paper she'd packed came in handy.

My own time: An easy way to tone down my fretting is to redirect some of that nervous energy into my own projects. It's good for me and it's good for A+, who likes it better when I treat her as a 9-("and a half!")-year-old instead of a 5-year-old. I went from spending practically all day with A+ in summer to having more focus time. I'm settling into my own rhythms. There's usually one big chunk I can dedicate to something that might take a long time. Monday is Emacs News, Tuesday is for consulting, Wednesday is my own stuff, Thursday is Bike Brigade, and Friday is Bike Brigade feedback or other things as needed. The other chunk of time might be for miscellaneous tasks: writing, tidying, errands, and so on. The long focus time chunk helps me feel like I'm making tangible progress on things that require coherent thought, and having another chunk for odds and ends lets me putter around with things that might not flow as smoothly.

Thanks to this rhythm, I managed to resist the temptation to focus on just the consulting requests. I finally got to implement a few of the Emacs tweaks that have been collecting dust in my inbox. I upgraded the Etherpad we use for EmacsConf. I felt a little more solid about it because I did it via an Ansible playbook I tested in Vagrant instead of doing it ad-hoc.

I also changed my Bike Brigade newsletter workflow to convert the Google Doc draft into a big mass of HTML that I can just dump into one block. I've been using it for the past few weeks. This is difficult for people to squeeze last-minute edits in, but getting rid of all those mouse clicks makes me a lot happier, and nothing has been truly urgent. It's a trade-off, but I'm okay with choosing to increase my happiness (or at least reduce annoyance).

Fun: In addition to these small technical improvements, I've been practising drawing, too: mostly simple little black-and-white icons, sometimes drawn with references. It's a reasonable way to use the time I'd otherwise spend waiting at playdates. I like it, although I'll probably mix more thoughts and colours back in. The icons are like babbling with words. Sometimes I still want to unwind tangled thoughts into sentences and paragraphs. Sometimes I can't think of anything in particular, and working on visual vocabulary at least keeps me moving forward.

I haven't been doing piano as much, so I decided to just stick with the Simply Piano subscription instead of adding Piano Marvel. I want to get through more of the songs I've marked as favourites. There's still much for me to learn, and it's fun practising with music that we recognize.

I also haven't been playing as much Stardew Valley lately, probably because I'd rather spend that time tweaking Emacs instead. Sometimes A+ likes to interleave homework sessions and Stardew Valley days, so we're still making a little progress on our Stardew Valley Expanded farm. I enjoy playing co-op with her.

The weather's getting colder. I'll be wrapping up our real-life garden soon. Eventually I'll need to shift my playdate time-filler to things I can do outside even with gloves on. Maybe less drawing and more dictation as a way of fleshing out thoughts, or maybe some reading too. Last year, her playmates shifted indoors as the weather cooled down. We might see if this year we'll have more outdoor playdates with new friends, or if the two extracurriculars A+ is in (along with some more bike adventures with us, now that W- is retired) will be enough for us. There's a definite seasonality to my life at the moment, which feels nice.

Next: In October, I probably should record EmacsConf introductions so that I have more space for handling captions once the videos come in. I've scheduled some TODOs for the different e-mails I need to send speakers, too. On the personal side, I want to keep giving A+ space to take ownership of her learning. A+ wants to experiment with gymnastics classes, so we'll try that out.

Blog posts

• Emacs:
  • Emacs and dom.el: quick notes on parsing HTML and turning DOMs back into HTML
  • Emacs: Cycle through different paragraph formats: all on one line, wrapped, max one sentence per line, one sentence per line
  • EmacsConf infrastructure upgrades
  • Obscure Emacs package appreciation: backup-walker
  • Adding Org Mode link awesomeness elsewhere: my-org-insert-link-dwim
  • Visual vocabulary practice - ABCs
  • Org Mode: a LaTeX letter that includes PDFs and hyperlinked page numbers
  • Org Mode: calculating table sums using tag hierarchies
  • Getting a Google Docs draft ready for Mailchimp via Emacs and Org Mode
• Drawing:
  • Colours
  • Considering the format of daily sketches
  • Anchoring my thoughts with a sketch
• Life:
  • Considering these monthly emoji summaries
  • Monthly review: August 2025
  • Writing into the quiet
  • What do I want from gardening?
  • Coming back to my own time
• Emacs News:
  • 2025-09-01 Emacs news
  • 2025-09-08 Emacs news
  • 2025-09-15 Emacs news
  • 2025-09-22 Emacs news
  • 2025-09-29 Emacs news

Sketches

• Drawing:
  • 2025-09-03-06 Considering the format of daily sketches – drawing.jpeg
  • 2025-09-21-04 Visual vocabulary practice - ABCs – drawing.jpeg
  • 2025-09-24-09 Drawing practice – drawing icons.jpeg
  • 2025-09-25-01 Drawing practice – drawing icons.jpeg
  • 2025-09-26-01 Drawing practice – drawing icons.jpeg
  • 2025-09-26-02 Drawing practice – drawing icons.jpeg
  • 2025-09-26-05 From "How to Draw Almost Every Day" - Kamo -- drawing icons
  • 2025-09-29-05 From "How to Draw Cute Doodles and Illustrations" (Kamo) -- drawing icons
  • 2025-09-30-02 From "How to Draw Cute Doodles and Illustrations" (Kamo) -- drawing icons
  • 2025-09-30-05 Stick figure feelings – drawing icons emotions.jpeg
  • 2025-09-30-06 Stick figure and feline feelings – drawing icons emotions.jpeg
  • 2025-09-30-09 Feline feelings – drawing icons cats.jpeg
  • 2025-09-12-07 Anchoring my thoughts with a sketch – drawing writing blogging.jpeg
• Life:
  • 2025-09-07-01 Week ending 2025-09-07 – weekly review journal.jpeg
  • 2025-09-08-01 What do I want from gardening? – gardening life.jpeg
  • 2025-09-08-02 Writing into the quiet – blogging.jpeg
  • 2025-09-10-10 Coming back to my own time – parenting life time.jpeg
  • 2025-09-13-05 A few of my brain's failure modes – life.jpeg
  • 2025-09-14-01 My brain at its best – life.jpeg
  • 2025-09-20-01 Even more untangling of my feelings about homework – parenting school.jpeg

Time

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

(I added more colours thanks to writing my IndieWeb Carnival blog post about colours and my thoughts on daily sketches. Progress!)

Like I predicted last month, my days were mostly focused on A+. She enjoyed the half-day pottery wheel summer camp that we experimented with, where she got to practise trimming her pottery and glazing the pieces with a marbled pattern. Aside from the pottery camp, our days were wide open. A+ took the initiative in suggesting places to go, although sometimes I let her know about events or experiences. We went on plenty of adventures.

We went to the temporary Ontario Science Centre pop-ups at Harbourfront and Sherway Gardens. It was fun coming up with more and more things to do at the OSC KidSpark pop-up. We liked pretending to be different Star Wars characters working as supermarket cashiers. We made up a game where I'd tell her "I want to buy a papaya" while holding up something different, like a pineapple. She'd correct me and tell me what to look for ("something a little pointy at both ends"), and I'd go off and find something that matched that description while still being incorrect (like a lemon). We also played another game that involved drawing the items for the grocery list and having the other person figure out what they were. We enjoyed checking out the sensory backpacks, too. (Nice fidget toys!) At the Sherway Gardens pop-up, A+ mostly enjoyed going through the adventure zone and playing with the foam building blocks.

At the CNE, we got caught in a bit of a downpour, but fortunately I had an umbrella and we were wearing Crocs. A+ enjoyed the farm building, and we checked out the kiddie midway after the rain. A+ liked the spinning rides and the Ferris wheel. She also did a good job of resisting temptations. (Games! Snacks! More rides! More! More!) Thank goodness for math.

We enjoyed petting pretend chickens and throwing snowballs at blazes at the Minecraft Experience. I had fun musing about the tech behind the scenes. We made it out to Biidaasige Park a couple of times, playing with the little dams and the snowy owl stage. We went to the ROM and tried their learning worksheet. A+ biked for an hour to get there one time. We went to the Dragon Festival to watch the lion dance. Some afternoons, we did a bit of swimming, but not much as the weather was starting to cool down.

We also caught a magic show at the library. A+ is now familiar enough with lots of science demonstrations that she can figure out many of the tricks in kid-oriented magic shows, but she's good at not spoiling it for others. I think she might sometimes get a little frustrated by the urge to demonstrate what she can handle so that people can skip ahead to more interesting stuff, which works fine in one-on-one interactions but is harder in a group class. (I remember this feeling! Even now, I'm still figuring out how to drop little signals into a conversation so that people who recognize them can code-switch to higher bandwidth, while trying to avoid overwhelming people…) Maybe this growing awareness of others coupled with the ability to quietly enjoy something more complex inside her head will help her with that.

We spent time with family, and A+ enjoyed playing with her relatives. We had lots of playdates with friends, too.

Indoors, we've been having fun going through the unit lessons in the LEGO Spike Prime kit. At first, A+ just wanted to deliver parts to me. Then she took over some of the coding, and now I've been assigned to the parts department while she builds. "It's not your set anymore, it's our set," she says. Mwahahaha! My evil plan is working.

Looking at what we've enjoyed this summer, I can see that she really likes the things that give us new ways to play with each other, like KidSpark or LEGO Spike Prime. Next would be the places that give her new things to explore even on her own, like Biidaasige's water play features, the pottery camp's lessons, or the CNE's rides. As for me, I appreciate that we can spend on classes where she can take advantage of someone's expertise or specialized equipment, and I wonder what else she might want to explore. A+'s getting more adept at considering a wider palette of places we can go or things we can do, and index cards and sketches help with that. I wonder what else Toronto has along those lines. In terms of play, A+'s drawn to mimicry more than competition, chance, or strong emotion.¹ I can see that not just in her role-playing, but also in the way she enters into our activities. I think that's my form of play, too. I like to share her interests, and even with the things I do in the Emacs community, I like to mimic and build on ideas.

Speaking of things I can strew in front of her to encourage mimicry… She occasionally flips through my Noteful notebooks, so it might be interesting to sneak some pedagogical documentation in there, laying out her growth in pictures and sketches so that it's easy for her to comprehend, and maybe sketching out some ideas for things to explore. This can help her see things over time, and it might also help show her the power of taking notes. Next time we go to KidSpark, it could be fun to take pictures of her at the supermarket checkout and then scribble on the images to portray the characters, or maybe we could learn how to draw the interactions as comics.

The summer camp gave me an opportunity to enjoy a lot of focused time. I used it all for consulting, finally finishing some tasks I'd been putting off for weeks. I also had some focus time in the evening. I made a few small improvements to my Emacs News publishing process, tweaking the plain text formatting based on suggestions from readers. I modified my journaling system to be able to see entries from this day across all the different years, copy all the displayed journal entries to the clipboard, and use more consistent CSS. I've been writing a bit more now that I have a Bluetooth keyboard on my bedside table. I've been drawing and doodling a little more, too, and I've been doing colouring sheets at the library.

I finished the Pre-Advanced III course in Simply Piano and started thinking about whether I want to switch to a different app, stop the subscription, or continue with it. I like how Piano Marvel has more advanced lessons, but I'm still getting the hang of timing. Then A+ started exploring the Simply Piano app again, so I guess we'll continue with that. There's still plenty for me to learn before I can fluidly play the Pre-Advanced II arrangements in the Simply Piano library without a lot of practice, so that's fine.

The cherry tomatoes in the garden are doing well. Four tomato plants (Sweet Million variety) give us more cherry tomatoes than we usually eat, so I can either increase my tomato consumption or consider growing three plants next year. Our 11 bitter melon plants are a bit slow, but W- says this is just about the right level of bitter melon production he wants.

Next month will be about settling into virtual grade 4 and figuring out our new rhythms. I'll probably do about 4 hours a week of consulting, saving the rest of the time for writing, drawing, coding, and slowly ramping up EmacsConf (coordination, infrastructure, captions). A+'s becoming more independent and more interesting, thinking about what she wants and using parent-speak to pitch her ideas to me ("We can always buy more [paint sticks]. You wanted to fuel my creativity.") I can't wait to see where this goes.

Blog posts

• Life:
  • Notes: Pottery wheel afternoon summer camp
  • Monthly review: July 2025
  • Turning 42; life as a 41-year-old
• Emacs:
  • Emacs elevator pitch: tinkerers unite
• Tech:
  • Nginx maps: How I redirect sketch IDs to blog posts or sketches
• Emacs News:
  • 2025-08-04 Emacs news
  • 2025-08-11 Emacs news
  • 2025-08-18 Emacs news
  • 2025-08-25 Emacs news

Sketches

• 2025-08-03-08 Life as a 41-year-old by month #yearly #review.jpeg
• 2025-08-04-01 Life as a 41-year-old #yearly #review.jpeg
• 2025-08-23-01 Summer 2025 notes #life #parenting.jpeg
• 2025-08-29-04 Learning more about what works for us – parenting life.jpeg
• 2025-08-29-12 The ingredients of my life now – life planning.jpeg
• 2025-08-31-01 Emacs elevator pitch – community emacs.jpeg
• 2025-08-31-02 Colours – drawing.svg
• 2025-08-31-13 August 2025 – monthly review.jpeg

Time

We only have so many summers together. Makes sense to make the most of them.

You can comment on Mastodon or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.