Month Recap - August
Written - Sunday, September 6th, 2026
Summer is officially over and the month of August had a lot to offer. Good and bad.
It started hectic enough that I didn’t even have the consciousness to write a July recap. It is what it is. Although I can definitely dedicate my lack of direction in August to the overfilled thoughts in my head from the month.
Since I didn’t write about July I suppose I can add some things from that month into this month's recap.
I’m trying to think about it and honestly nothing is coming to my mind about what happened in July which means time moves too fast for me to retain anything or I didn’t have anything that was memorable enough to keep in my mind or I’m not taking a moment to appreciate the moments enough. If I had to be honest it’s probably a combination of all three of those.
I’m checking my camera roll to refresh my mind and it honestly seems like I spent a lot of time with myself. Mostly just sticking to school (seen by the mound of photos I took of the professors in class slides), then also spending some time solo exploring parts of Toronto during my morning bike rides.
I visited the freezing waters at Woodbine Beach, the strange Rome-esque brick creation at Tommy Thompson Park, the pebble beach at Humber Bay Park East, and the floating convenience store art installation at Harbour Square Park, and the tiny but pleasant Marie Curtis Park Beach.
The World Cup also finished, although it wasn’t quite as enjoyable with the results of the Korean National Team, but it was still fun to see the World Cup co-hosted in Canada. Honestly I never imagined it would be held in Canada, even partially. I got to see the atmosphere of Norway vs. Brazil game in a Brazilian sports bar which definitely has influenced me to one day visit Brazil. I also watched a game at the center circle on a big screen at UofT while eating pizza and drinking some beers bought at the LCBO. It felt like I was in Korea again, having a casual drink in the park. I miss that. It’s nice to have that feeling in Toronto.
So the month was pretty solid looking back at it. However I can now recall why I didn’t even catch a moment to write all of this last month. I had my third and final midterm for my online macro economics class on the second last Saturday, and then another midterm, this one for my econometrics class, on the last Friday of the month. Then a written assignment due the following Sunday for my macro economics class. Man it felt like I was drowning, not to mention my results for those midterms adding more pressure.
I guess this is where I can start talking about how August was though. There were a few memorable events. For starters I had my exams to finish my summer courses.
After handing in my econometrics final I can’t lie I was second guessing myself, worried that even though I wrote things down it was actually all fluff. However I still felt there was some light in the dark for me to pass.
My macro economics final though… that was probably the most joke thing I’ve ever done and I don’t mean that it was fun. The only joke was me lol. I haven’t walked out of an exam room more sure I nuked my grade in my life. I wish I was exaggerating but I probably set the world record for the least words written in two hours. The course required a minimum 50% on the final regardless of your grade from other assignments since it was an online class. So the only thing I felt confident in was not passing that course. Not really the thing you want to be confident in for a final exam.
Last week though I found out that I ironically passed both classes with the same grade. I want to question it but at the same time I am more than happy to accept the results right now. So thankfully I will not have to retake those courses!
Speaking of last week, I was in Hawkesbury, of all places (a small town about an hour by car between Ottawa and Montreal). I was sleeping over at a friend's place when I learned about my miracle grades. The reason I was in Hawkesbury though was because I had made a four day bikepacking journey from Toronto to Ottawa! I plan to make a post on that alone since it was quite a journey but it was quite nice to spend some time camping and cruising alone.
Arriving at my destination in Ottawa though I had a good time catching up with an old childhood friend I hadn’t seen in almost four years. It almost wasn’t about to happen since funnily enough they had a little get away planned the exact dates I was in the area.
Me: arrived Saturday 29th evening, leaving Wednesday 2nd afternoon
Friend: leaving Sunday 30th morning , arriving Wednesday 2nd evening
Thankfully they were forgiving enough to meet me after I asked them the day of my arrival. In my defense I really didn't even think they lived in Ottawa anymore but luckily I asked (more lucky they agreed). Not to mention their getaway trip was planned for Kingston and Prince Edward County, the exact places I passed and slept in just a few days before my arrival to Ottawa.
We had a good laugh about the circumstances in addition to the things we joked about in the past and our current life situations. It was fun to catch up even though we had barely spent an evening. Honestly though I still haven’t comprehended how much time has passed since the last time I saw them, maybe because we chatted the same way as if no time had actually passed since our last conversation. Even though I know both of our lives have changed a lot since the last time, it still feels the same. I’m not sure if that's a good or bad thing. It’s probably not a binary thing anyways, but it’s weird not to feel anything besides nostalgia. I feel like I should be having some epiphany about the relationships I have with people in my life. That said, I'm just happy that they are doing well.
Part of the reason I’ve been thinking about the relationships I have in my life I think has come from the time I spent with my parents in Niagara Falls the weekend I finished my finals. I haven’t spent proper time doing some activity away together with my parents, but that weekend my dad and I biked from Toronto to Niagara Falls (my mom took the GO train). We then spent time going to a wine vineyard to do some tasting, shopped a bit at the outlet, and of course visited the falls.
The last time I went to the falls was just before covid occurred. I remember it well because I got very sick after that trip, pretty sure I had the first strain of covid in Canada lol. Reflecting on the last time I visited with my family then, I told my mom this trip while we were walking along the falls, that compared to when I was a kid the waterfall looks way smaller than I remembered. Literally the biggest waterfall I’ve seen in my life for some reason looked smaller all because I grew up. Perspective is interesting in that way. Some things a couple years later are going to change for me even though they don’t change. Spending time with my parents felt so sad for the first time in my life, I don’t know if it’s because of the city Niagara itself has an unappealing atmosphere (holy shit that place has to be filled with corruption because everything looks like it’s from a post-apocalypse movie) or maybe because I was still sulking on the performance I had for my finals. Either way it was hitting me hard how much my parents had done for me in my life and how much time really isn’t left with them to enjoy things like this. When I mean “this”, I’m referring mostly to the time we have just for our family. I know there will be memories with them if I were to have my own wife and kids, but for just my parents, sister, and I not much time or experiences are left. It’s like the waterfall, they are always my family but when I’m a bit older it will be a different family to me.
That brings me back to the present though. I’m going to start another new semester. I’m changing a couple things this semester though, hopefully for the better. There are a lot of important things to me that I want to do within the semester and coming year. I plan to focus on keeping my life as simple as possible to focus on these tasks in order to minimize distractions while maximizing my effort and growing my dedication to them.
I’ve thought about why I wanted to focus on those things and of course there are some valid reasons but there also really isn’t. I’ve been starting to question myself on what I want to dedicate my time to and why I want to do it, it sort of spirals into the common “what do I want to do with my life?” or “how should I be living my life?” questions. However I sort of realized it’s really unproductive to continually think that. It’s “analysis paralysis” where basically you’re trying to game your life by excessively overthinking how to do things to the point no solution or action is done. So in the end to actually figure out how to live your life is just to live it. You can’t know and then live your life, that doesn’t make sense.
Even journaling like this can cause analysis paralysis. Honestly it’s probably what I was feeling the past months. I really did question myself journaling my thoughts because I felt they didn’t add any future merit since I wasn’t using them to progress myself. Rather my thoughts were only questioning myself more in a way that was trying to dissect myself deeper without finding a conclusion. I might be contradicting myself by previously saying that I should just live my life without knowing a full reason but a conclusion is necessary if it’s going to help you move forward.
So in the end I believe that what I’m doing is going somewhere by just focusing on tasks I believe are important but without overly dissecting their value like a stock, I’m going to try to keep my life simple to focus on them and make changes where I feel it’s necessary. That’s action, that’s simplification, and that’s my decision.
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