This month felt like a spoonful of hell.

Not a bucket. Not a bowl. Just enough to remind you that life can get messy without completely falling apart. There were moments that were genuinely difficult, moments that were unbelievably boring, and somehow the whole thing disappeared before I even had time to process it.

June genuinely went by in a blur.

Work consumed almost the entire month. It was one deadline after another, and I even ended up working through a few weekends, something I never really enjoy doing. Eventually I just accepted it for what it was. Sometimes you have months where work demands more than you'd like, and this happened to be one of them.

On the writing side of things, I managed to get out three Formula 1 race recaps. One of them technically carried over from the end of May, but it still counts. The biggest thing I wrote, though, was my review of The Boys Season 5. At over 11,000 words, it's now one of the longest things I've ever written.

I had a lot to say, a lot to criticize, and a lot to unpack.

One thing I've started noticing is that writing lets me express thoughts in a way I still struggle to do in conversation. I eventually get to the point when I'm speaking, but it usually takes me a while to properly articulate what I'm actually thinking. Writing gives me that time to organize everything.

Maybe that's a sign it's finally time to give video creation a proper shot. I've become comfortable expressing myself through writing. Perhaps it's time to challenge myself with another medium and learn how to communicate those same thoughts out loud.

Apart from that, I still have a few reviews left over from May. There are a couple of movies I still want to write about, and my Arrowverse retrospective is sitting around halfway complete. That one is taking much longer than I expected because it isn't something I can rush. It's one of those projects where I need to sit down, think, revisit things, and then write. It'll get done eventually, just not as quickly as I'd hoped.

Project-wise, Beyond Money has quietly become one of the most useful things I've ever built. I use it almost every day to track expenses, investments, and just generally keep an eye on my finances. The public version is still behind my personal one, and I haven't found the time to update it yet. Hopefully I'll get around to that soon.

For the blog itself, I've also been working on a fairly major backend change. I've always loved the idea of giving projects their own subdomains, but the downside has been that all of their code still lives inside one massive repository. I do have separate repositories for some of them because of their size, but my goal isn't really to clean up my Git history. It's to clean up my working environment. At around two in the morning I randomly had an idea, wrote it down before I forgot it, and after thinking through a few concepts I realized it might actually solve the problem. Hopefully that's something I'll get to implement over the next month.

I also gave my F1 Haptic Trailer website a small makeover.

Nothing revolutionary, just a collection of little improvements I'd wanted for a while. I added a proper starting screen with audio to simulate the starting lights before the experience begins, and it makes the whole thing feel a little more complete.

I also made a few more Mynyl vinyl designs. They're getting there, but I think my focus now needs to shift away from making more designs and towards improving the overall experience. A proper landing page, better navigation, and something that feels inviting instead of immediately throwing users into the deep end.

Do check them out! https://f1hapticandroid.beyondmebtw.com & https://mynyl.beyondmebtw.com

As for everything else I want to build, we'll see.

I spend so much of my weekdays, and sometimes even my weekends, coding for work that by the end of it I'm honestly tired of looking at code. Despite that, I always seem to find my way back to my own projects. Maybe it's because they're mine, maybe it's because I enjoy building things on my own terms, but the motivation always finds a way to come back.

There's one last thing I wanted to talk about. With only a couple of days left in the month, I got involved in an incident. I'm intentionally not going into too much detail, but physically I'm doing alright. Mentally, though, it left me with something to think about. Nothing life-changing or overly traumatic, just a realization that's probably going to stick with me for a while. There's a phrase I've always liked: "No good deed goes unpunished." I don't think I ever truly understood what it meant until now. For the longest time, I assumed the "punishment" was something material. You lose money, you lose time, someone takes advantage of your kindness. But I don't think that's what the phrase is really getting at. Doing the right thing doesn't grant you immunity from hardship. Being a good person doesn't somehow protect you from bad outcomes.

The incident also forced me to confront something I've struggled with for a long time, my need for control. I like understanding situations, planning ahead, and believing that if I make the right decisions, things will generally work out. This month reminded me just how much of life exists outside that control. Sometimes you can do everything right and still end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's a difficult pill to swallow, but probably an important one. Life doesn't owe me certainty, and it certainly doesn't promise fairness. All I can really control is how I respond to whatever comes next.

But anyway, life goes on, and so must I. I'll see you next month.

And before I forget, I forgot to say in last month's Mini, Happy Pride Month! Love who you are, and if someone doesn't agree, they can go to hell.