This post is inspired by Doug Belshaw’s and Stephen Downes’ reviews of what they’ve been up to over the summer.

Although I’ve been writing here a bit more this summer than in the previous twelve months, I have not posted anything since early August. There are reasons for that, most of which comes down to a quietting and refocusing on fewer online activities overall. Anyway here’s a sampling of what I’ve been up to (in no particular order):

Learning a New Role

Last in the spring I changed roles for my day job. It’s still instructional design but the focus is on trades education materials which is a shift from a lot of the elearning, and H5P driven online learning types of designs I’d done in recent years. It’s been an interesting change to come at learning design from a slightly different angle than I’d become accustomed to, and a nice return to trades which is where I began my education journey (having taught practical and applied arts in K12 at the start of my career).

Reviving a Skill and Interest

It seems 2026 is a bit of a year for me to call back to some foundations for me. I stopped taking on new ID clients for the time being to focus in on starting a small Shiatsu practice here. I became a certified shiatsu practitioner back in 2016, and decided to branch out from how I’d been practicing to find space at a wellness centre and begin taking on clients more formally. It’s still small, but I enjoy the change of pace and being able to work with people on their journey to relax the mind, rebalance the body, and restore energy.

A Little Bit of Travel

I got to spend some time abroad and reconnect with a good friend. In addition to that, headed back to my hometown, visited my old karate school and judo club. Saw friends and family. And finally a trip to Victoria to see some friends before they move even further away. I’ve been grateful to be able to travel as freely as this, and hope that will continue in the 26/27 year.

Social Media (Lack thereof)

Over the years I’ve slowly been deleting social media accounts, starting with Facebook in 2016 (I wonder what happened then), followed by Twitter in 2022 (I wonder what happened then). Those were the big ones, but other platforms that I had a smaller presence on slowly were powered down as well, including most recently LinkedIn. Let me tell you, not seeing the daily LIbro posts has been really good for me. This summer I’d been listening to the Gloves Off podcast (at least that’s where I think I heard about this) and they talked about some Canadian social media start ups. One in particular, Gander, sounded promising. Built on the Bluesky ATprotocal they had an interesting approach to registering (allowing you to browse and not post) and ID verfication (in order to post) limiting users to Canadians. I only tried the view only mode, and after about 72 hours deleted the account. Partly it may be because I don’t get as much interest/value/engagement with/from social media as I once did. But also I think a big factor was that I was a lonely stranger there. I moreso suspect it’s that the switching costs are really quite obvious when you try to get on a new platform, and we’re doomed to be stuck with the monopolistic social media platforms until we get reform that allows new players to enter the market.

Judo

This summer I spent my weeks between a couple of dojos here, and moved more into coaching capacity. I’ve been chipping away at my next level of NCCP certification and have been seeing a lot of progress. It’s been great stepping into that role more and it tickles that part of my brain that has always enjoyed teaching. I went through a six week block at the one club focusing on the akimoto roll, and helped others at another club prepare for upcoming gradings. All of that mixed in with my own skill development as the 26/27 competition year closes in.

Rōnin

I say this a bit in jest, but in a way it’s true. This summer I began looking for other martial arts to train again. Formerly I trained karate (shito ryu) and when I moved here I began with one school (shorin ryu). That had paused due to some life circumstances and now I felt I could get back to it. I was able to visit a number of places of a number of different styles, wado ryu, kyokushin, uechi ryu, chito ryu, etc. Everyone was really generous with sharing their styles and techniques and the more you see different styles the more you see what connects all martial arts. I even have dipped into a bit of krav maga, and self-defense over the summer and I have more exploration to do. I also dipped into a bit of BJJ and may continue that once I figure out this year’s schedule.

Speaking of Self Defense

This summer I got to take part in a week long self defense retreat along side 28 participants from all around the world. It was a fantastic experience getting to spend time learning with and from other martial artists, self defense experts, and the host of the whole thing. It included technical sessions and challenges (scenario based experiences). That was all pretty heavy on the nervous system, but the host did a great job of both managing everyone and making sure we had plenty of good food and recovery options. In part, my experience there prompted the rōnin mode I’ve been in the rest of the summer. This experience opened up another side to judo for me that I’d just begun to scratch the surface of and am looking forward to continuing this year.

Audiobooks

I’ve got The AI Con and Slow Productivity to finish still, but this summer I finished both Life After Cars and Shinto: The Kami Way. Life After Cars combined with the book I listened to last winter, Here Comes the Sun paint entirely different pictures for how our built environment could be organized. Certainly different than the vision being crammed down our throats in pretty much every other medium. Overall, I’ve been listening to books mostly on Libro.fm. No Amazon DRM bull, so if you’re looking for an alternative to a tech giant, check it out.

Games

I’ve managed to carve out a bit of time for games. Not nearly like when we were all stuck at home a few years ago and I did a year in review post of everything I’d played. Most recently we finished Sea of Stars which has a very classic JRPG SNES vibe and feel to it. The music gets in your head and sets the mood, the game play is largely engaging, the story in enticing enough. If you were a fan of old Final Fantasy, Secret of Mana, or Chrono Trigger this one is worth picking up. As always, semi-regular dungeons and dragons time as well. Somehow I’ve managed to play semi-regularly with the same group since about 2010, and we’ll keep that up as best we can (schedules are usually the bane of any DND groups attempts).

Coming Up

This upcoming year is still up in the air a bit. I’m currently trying to sort out coaching and training schedules, settle into specific clubs, and continue to work on the shiatsu business. A lot less technical work than in previous years, but that’s ok too.

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Photo by Gregory Atkats on Unsplash