This is the sixth edition of my monthly review. June was the final month of Q2, and with it the close of the year’s first half, so this one contains both monthly and quarterly review : a look at how June went, and an honest accounting of the entire quarter. And time does really flies!

June had a single centre of focus: a trip to Japan with both my kids. Thirteen of the month’s thirty days were spent in Hong Kong, Osaka, and Tokyo, and everything else was planned around that. It was, without competition, the best long trip of the year. It was also the month my body made a decision I’d been avoiding. Argh.

And stepping back to the whole quarter, Q2 had three distinct flavours. April was about going wide : an eight-day trip that turned into a friendship festival. May was about breakthroughs : a long-stuck thread finally moving, hyrox training, and a loss that reframed everything. June was about just being present. Taken together, it was a rich, full and busy quarter.

Family & Relationships

This was the strongest pillar of the quarter, and the most alive.

Across Q2 I showed up for every one of my daughter’s exams : an unbroken run through BITS, JEE Main, JEE Advanced, and counseling. My son’s homeschooling became real: a first structured month, a German exam prepared and written, maths moving ahead of grade. And the quarter closed with the trip that mattered most.

June’s Japan trip with Riya and Ryan was thirteen days across three cities, and it was everything I’d hoped for : no agenda beyond exploring together, walking endlessly, getting lost in neighbourhoods, watching my two kids loving a country so different from ours. I came home, in my own words from the journal, “very mentally relaxed and in a good place.” Running underneath the trip was Riya’s college decision : her counselling rounds were live during the exact days we were away, so before we left, she and I built her option tree together, every login working and every deadline marked. We landed back on 23rd June and 24th June was counseling. As of now, she has got seats in NSUT Delhi with Computers and Maths branch and NIT Delhi with Aerospace Engineering branch. It will only get better in further rounds of counselling.

There was also loss. Losing Gauri in late May was the reframe of the quarter : a reminder that the plans we keep deferring are written against a clock we don’t control. It’s the reason the long-postponed trip with Mom finally has a real date instead of another deferred. That trip still didn’t happen in June : six straight months of good intentions : but she travels to Canada from August, which finally gives it a hard edge: the third week of July, or not this year.

Wellness & Fitness

Q2 was mix in this : High of Hyrox and triggered rehab.

The good story: strength training became identity-level, holding through travel and disruption. Personal training : which I began in May : genuinely changed my relationship with my body. I found myself enjoying being coached and pushed in a way I hadn’t in years.

The hard story: the quarter ended in rehab. Early in June, after some nagging pain, I went for doc visit and a proper assessment. The diagnosis was a weak lower back : the classic cost of long hours at a desk and years of skipping real core work : and my physio was clear: pull out of the Hyrox race I’d been building toward all year, and put the next stretch into rehab. I made the call the same day: “Done, decided, it is clear.”

It stung, but it wasn’t a surprise so much as a verdict. My sitting has been too much - 10-12 hours a day. It was going to take its toll. On top of that, I don’t recall if I ever did mobility or core workout regularly. So this doesnt come as a full surprise. It is a good wakeup call for long term health building.

The trip, ironically, was the best medicine : Japan is built for walking, and I moved for 15-20k steps every day. Coming home drove the contrast home; on June 27th I wrote that Delhi leaves me “trapped indoors,” and “this is not how life should be.” The routine is broken right now and I feel it. July is for rebuilding : but rebuilding right. Rehab first, back before load, and weight as the lever I can actually control. Sleep remains the quieter lever, with one promising thread from May to run properly in H2.

Finance & Investing

If the quarter had a single breakthrough, it was here. The long house thread : completely stuck since January, zero motion for a long time : finally moved and then concluded. I’ll keep the specifics off the post, as always, but this was definately biggest breakthrough of this quarter.

The discipline side : the reading, the steady company analysis : is a different story. It slipped most months, and I’ve now consolidated it honestly into the second half of the year rather than pretending each month would be the one. And there’s a new, bigger project in front of me: putting what the house freed up to work, thoughtfully and with a written thesis rather than in a rush. That’s the finance work that matters now.

Learning & Writing

June was a busy month and writing and reading took its toll. I wrote little bit - 6 articles in Q2, most were reviews. Not much writing happened. Same for learning / reading. This was mostly a quarter of execution.

Mind & Meditation

This is the pillar where Q2 taught me the most by failing me the most. I built a seated meditation habit in Q1. It broke during April’s travel and never came back, and by May I stopped pretending I was “rebuilding a streak.” The annual plan I wrote in December had already told me the answer I was ignoring: movement is my meditation. Swimming, walking, being coached into total focus, walking for miles through Japanese cities : that is mindfulness for the way my brain actually works.

So the reframe is the real progress. I let go of a target that wasn’t working and named the practice that does. The smaller, truer habit I’m still installing is a one-line evening journal. And I’m still carrying Gauri’s reminder from the hotel terrace in Bangalore : life is so transient, enjoy each moment. The whole Japan trip was, in a way, an answer to it.

Joy

Joy in Q2 came through people, travel, and two genuinely new dimensions : a community I was initiated into in May, and personal training turning out to be a source of joy rather than just effort. In June, Japan was the joy, and I deliberately chose not to dilute it with any parallel novelty. Some months joy needs planning; this one just needed me to show up for my plans.

What joy did not come through was scheduled novelty. The micro-adventure goal : pottery, woodwork, coffee roasting : went five months without happening, and I’ve formally retired it. Forcing engineered novelty was just not fitting in my other commitments. I am not writing it off completely from life, but this is not the time.

Travel

Q2 was the quarter of movement. A rich week in Bangalore in April, again in May and then Japan and Hong Kong with both kids in June : the undisputed highlight of the quarter and possibly the year. The only trip that keeps slipping is the one closest to home in spirit : Bihar with Mom : and it’s now the first, hard-dated commitment of Q3.

Office

Kept high level, as always. Q2 held the most intellectually demanding work of my year so far : a significant restructuring effort that came together over April and May and concluded just before the Japan trip. A couple of other long-running threads also finally closed. I set a clean handover and stepped away for thirteen days without the work following me abroad. The quarter expanded my scope meaningfully. A chapter I’ll write about properly some day, but not here.

The Q2 Big Picture

Three months ago I wrote down the Q2 Rocks. Here’s how they honestly landed:

Q2 Rock Final Status
Hyrox Delhi training on track Missed. Withdrew from the race in June on medical advice : weak lower back.
Bihar trip with Mom Missed. Six months carried. Now hard-dated for the third week of July.
Daily Athlete launched Missed. Momentum stalled early; deferred.
Ryan homeschooling structured Strong. Live and going well; not sustained weekly through the Japan month.

The honest through-line: my biggest wins this quarter were never on this list. The two things I’ll remember from Q2 : concluding the long house thread and the Japan trip : weren’t rocks at all, while several things I’d underlined as must-do quietly slipped. That’s the pattern to understand, not shrug off: I move when the gate is real and external, and I drift when a goal is quiet and optional. A long list of non-negotiables turned out to be just a long list.

The Honest Scorecard

Pillar Q2 Verdict
Family & Relationships Very Strong. Present for every exam. Homeschooling became real. Thirteen days in Japan. Gauri’s loss reframed presence.
Wellness & Fitness Mixed. Strength and PT became identity-level : but the quarter ended in injury and a withdrawn race.
Finance & Investing Breakthrough. The four-months-stuck house thread concluded. Study consolidated to H2. Deploying it well is next.
Learning & Writing Steady, then quiet. Cadence mostly held, paused in June. A portfolio lens applied to a life decision. Workshop unbuilt.
Mind & Meditation Reframed. Let go of the streak that wasn’t working. Movement named as the real practice.
Joy Strong. Two new dimensions. Joy through people and travel. Micro-adventure retired.
Travel Strong. Bangalore, then Japan + Hong Kong with the kids. Bihar the one that keeps slipping.
Office Key Chapter. A demanding restructuring concluded. Scope expanded.

Looking Ahead

The half-year checkpoint is clarifying. What worked in H1 was decisive action against hard, external gates : a house concluded, a trip taken, exams shown up for. What didn’t work were the quiet, optional, solo practices. So Q3 is built around a small number of real gates.

Three priorities carry the quarter. Deploy what the house freed up : the biggest finance project of the year, done with a written thesis and conviction rather than haste. Rebuild the body properly : rehab first, a return to sustainable training, and a deliberate cut to a target weight I can actually control. And the trip with Mom, in July, before she travels : the six-month deferral ends with a booking, not another line in a plan.

Family visiting from abroad is here for the first stretch of the month, and being present with them is the point, not a distraction from it.

Fewer rocks than last quarter, and chosen with a lot of thought. Half the year is gone. The half that remains deserves the discipline of focus.

I am a warrior monk.

This is part of a monthly series where I review my life across the pillars that matter to me. The goal isn’t perfection, it’s awareness. If you know where you are, you can choose where to go.