When the last week of spring hit 37° and the forecast showed December bringing with it an early taste of 40° it felt like the inevitable and familiar return of summer. Days of leaves at the front door, numb fingers trying to assemble breakfast, cravings for sun to penetrate clouds, all were forgotten. It was summer again. The fifth I would live through at my current address. I could already see the next few months spreading out before me. Early morning walks. Blocking out the sun with whatever I could. Air conditioning. Smoothies. Salads. Emerging into the air after dinner for beach walks or sunset beers. Summer Again. I saved my playlist with that name ready for the weeks ahead.

Summer provided all of that. And it provided injuries, stress, Christmas, family, house stress, and new music.

It's now March 19, and forecast for 33° tomorrow. Every day I wake up and think, Summer Again. But today at least one long lingering stress from the end of summer has been resolved. So it feels appropriate that I should post my summer playlist now, in the hopes that after this the drought might break and it will actually rain again.

Specific summer memories must include:
Cooking a lot of olive oil, salt, herbs and chicken.
So many cheap berries from Saturday morning markets strolls with Vanessa.
Enjoying the tiny difference that roller shutters made to the house temperature.
Floating in a pool.
A family dinner as sunset light filtered in from across the mountain tops.
Nash eating/drinking pup-a-cinos.
Doing a lot of holiday planning.
It almost never, ever raining.

I know what compelled me to buy a ticket for the Anjunadeep Open Air show tonight. I listen to their mixes all the time. Usually around 9AM after coffee while programming, or better, drawing a component diagram. Progressive trance. Sonic synth work. Well chosen vocal samples. Visualising the relationships between systems. Bliss.

But standing in a crowd at the other end of the day would be a different story. And back in October I couldn't have known that I would be in the apex of preparing my house for sale. Yet I still went. I guess I wanted to see if I felt something. Or if I had any sense of belonging.

I did not. But the music was good and loud. Earplugs were worth bringing, and the high vis vest made for a pleasant cruise home on the bike in the temperate, open air.

Would I do it again? Probably not. Maybe if I brought my laptop.

There's not much to love about heatwaves, but last night I did get a serendipitous shuffle that put Leftfield in my car speakers as I set off for an after dark run to put boxes into storage. With the windows down, it was a good vibe.

No such luck tonight, even with the sun disappeared I had to drive with the air conditioner pumping just to be able to roll down the windows.

Recording this memory for reflecting on next winter.

Spring 2024 started with many leftover quiz night cupcakes and pizza slices, and a crisp Sunday morning. Irises were in bloom. Jumpers were worn. A lot happened in the following three months that led to a barefoot walk on the beach last Saturday night as the sun showed no interest in the horizon despite it being well after 7pm.

Tomato plants have grown, exams were passed, pub trivia was won, wellness benefits were spent on putt putt and bouldering. Blinds and shutters have been installed in preparation for the Summer 24-25 playlist. We walked on the beach.

I visited Alligator Gorge, Watson's Bay, and Melbourne twice. I saw the milky way and a miniature horse. Hats and shorts replaced heated gloves and puffer jackets. I witnessed another AFL Grand Final that I'll probably forget. I made a lot of sandwiches seasoned with Gaganis italian herb mix, plus quite a few pizzas. We walked on the beach some more.

I bought a new computer and monitor. I settled into my new job. I rode my bike to a brewery, and then caught the new train line back. Vanessa beat me in arcade basketball many times. I did a lot of gym and I saw Chihuly in the Garden. Nash swam in West Lakes. We walked on the beach.

I took many photos of flowers and birds. And Nash. And sunsets at the beach.

I lost two teeth. I went to Christmas Carols. I wrote a bunch of code. I listened to a lot of music. Over 5000 unique songs, 80+ a day. That's not counting the times when I dug up old mixes for the speaker in the gym, or when I put on Anjunadeep mixes for focused software development, or when Vanessa was DJ in the car on the way to the beach.

It was a good Spring.

Considering all the effort I put into passing my latest work certification, I can't believe I missed preselecting the playlist for after I passed the exam.

Over the past six years I've tried a few ways of getting through winter - surgery, northern hemisphere holidays, global pandemics - with varying levels of success. Winter 2024 featured none of those and while I was still embittered about the cold a lot it was probably the most tolerable winter I can recall having. Though not as tolerable as hiking through forests in western Europe.

What was the trick to this?

Better warmth strategy. I bought an alpine-quality puffer jacket in May, and upgraded my old North Face jacket during winter as well. I bought gloves with mini heaters in them. You just need to recharge the batteries every couple of days.

I discovered the benefits of wearing pyjama pants under my tracksuit pants for extra warmth. I bought new socks. I wore beanies. There was a single morning it was cold enough to justify wearing all of the above at the same time. Most of the time I was able to coordinate a few of these together such that I did not feel cold while being outside. This resulted in less grumbling.

Indoors, I gave up on watching television in my freezing living room and spent every night at home in my study with the door shut and the heater running. Even that was still pretty chilly and didn't stop me from teaming the pyjama pants and tracksuit pants at times, but it was tolerable.

Good distractions - one technical project and one mindless pastime. The former was designing and building the quiz website. The latter was beating Breath of the Wild, which I actually completed around the second weekend of July and then I didn't play any games after. But it got me past the solstice.

Getting sun on my arms at every opportunity. Mostly by timing my lunch breaks for around 2pm on days when there were no clouds, and walking really fast to justify removing my jumper.

Also what definitely helped was not getting sick, other than the tail end of a cold in the first days of June. How I managed this is probably due to a lack of social activity and well timed vaccines, but it absolutely made the season way less shit. Also having most of August off when it was serendipitously quite sunny certainly accelerated the transition into spring.

All of that was good, but I think solid routines were the real key to getting through winter. Trips to the markets on Saturday mornings, walking Nash to the bakery on Sundays. Birthday month's daily desserts. Inviting myself around to Alex's fire on the weekends. Coffee and progressive trance between 9 and 10 each workday.

A paper titled Routine and the Perception of Time in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that a key factor of people remembering time as passing more slowly was "anchors of novelty", and by removing a lot of novelty from my life in Winter it certainly does feel like it breezed by.

Actually, considering I did work two major projects, changed jobs, had a colonoscopy and a two week holiday I'm not sure those enjoyable routines really did help that much, and maybe it was the pyjamas plus tracksuits that was the real MVP.

Or perhaps it was actually the new music.

Autumn is the season for change. Like, a change in scenery.

This double entendre certainly suits the three months which just passed. Weddings in Hindu temples. Weddings in Circus tents. Beer hunts. Giant cookies. More gym sessions. Walks through sunny hills and valleys. Barefoot walks on sands. Visits to bakeries down south. Food at restaurants in Brisbane's West End. Concerts after dark. Sunshine at lunchtime. Tasting Australia in Victoria Square. Odyssey kingdoms. A vision of 1969 London. Board Games. Sunsets. 39 degrees evenings at the Fringe and 4 degrees mornings testing out the new puffer jacket.

As always, a soundtrack that developed to go with these things. The walking, the exercise, the programming, the drives, the wedding dance floors, the gardening, the soup making and the smoothie drinking. I love music so much.

I reached the end of the excellent Utopia Avenue today. It took me a few weeks. The story was an absorbing ride through the late 1960's, with fully fleshed characters and a real example of how good writing benefits from having multiple protagonists. The way they interact, when they all have their own motivations and back-stories really gives them character. As someone who has been paid to write words about music - something that is not worth doing! - I also appreciated his technical ability to bring sound to life through the written word.

I have been listening to a lot of music from the era as well, thanks to its countless name drops, to try and enrich the senses, but I don't have any inclination to go down a psychedelic rabbit hole so I am writing this now to remember reading about Dean, Griff, Jasper and Elf.

To bring this journal entry back to my own life, I listened to that audiobook this morning while mowing the lawn, pruning the vines and sweeping up half-pecked lilly-pilly berries from the backyard. Then I did some rehab, lat pulldowns and side planks.

The weather so far this May has been amazing, other than the creepy stat that it has barely rained since January. This morning's walk to the bakery with Nash was especially picturesque.