july in full bloom

on summer expectations, being present, and monthly keepsakes

West Princes Street Gardens

Summer has felt particularly good so far. I don’t want to jinx it as it isn’t over yet, but it has felt like a proper summer. Despite work and not going on the typical beach holiday, I’m making the most of it, finding a balance between rest and fun. Being more spontaneous, joining plans, saying yes more often while also saying no without guilt, and spending afternoons reading in the park, with fresh fruit within arm’s reach.

There can be a lot of pressure to have the “picture-perfect summer”. This season is often seen as the one you’re supposed to enjoy, the one you’re supposed to make the most of. But summer can feel fleeting, especially in Scotland. We wait months for 20-degree weather and suddenly it’s over. And that scarcity creates pressure. On top of that, advertising, social media, TV shows, films and books all tell us that these are the months when life happens.

In the dead of winter, no one is constantly sharing pictures of themselves rotting on their sofa. But in summer, our social media feeds are full of people travelling, having picnics, spending time at the beach, going to music festivals, watching gorgeous sunsets, having rooftop drinks, and gathering with friends. Even if everyone experiences a few magical days during this season, online it can look like others are living them every day.

Whether we are content with how our summer is going, comparison is almost inevitable. It somehow feels like each day should be maxed out, with each day becoming a highlight. If our summer isn’t full of those, it can feel as though we’ve somehow missed out on a whole season.

We also romanticise a summer version of ourselves. We’ll read more books, we’ll journal more, we’ll be more adventurous, more outdoorsy, more active, more free, more fun. We’ll have more time to do all the things we couldn’t do in the previous seasons.

Ironically, my favourite summer memories aren’t attached to a backdrop. They are much simpler than that. Hearing the ice cream truck and rushing outside for a spontaneous treat, jumping in the waves or going wild swimming in a lake, picking up some wine on the way home, stopping by a friend’s place and building a charcuterie board together, reading on a park bench, wandering through an art gallery to discover an artist I have never heard of, trying out a new café and savouring a solo date. None of those moments are extraordinary on their own, but together they become the season.

When did summer become an occasion to show off our tan lines on social media instead of a time for us to relax, rest our bodies and enjoy ourselves?

Somehow we’ve confused having a memorable summer with having a meaningful one.

I think that’s why I don’t post on Instagram while I’m travelling or doing things. I want to experience those moments before I turn them into something to share. I want to be fully present. And that’s how my summer has felt so far.

---

Each month, I like to take a moment to reflect and share a few of my favourites. Below, I’ve rounded up my picks in the following categories:

• Keepsakes – Moments to hold onto

• Media Stack – Digital detours that held my attention

• Music Interlude – Songs I kept listening to

• Bookmarks – Books I flipped through

---

KEEPSAKES

Pentland Hills

being a tourist in my own city
Whenever someone asks me when the best time to visit Edinburgh is, I just tell them to avoid August at all costs. August is the busiest, most crowded, and most expensive month of the year in the city because it’s festival season and somehow the population doubles. I took a few days off in early July to enjoy the city while it’s still possible to walk without bumping into each other. I went to a few art galleries, cafés and bookshops, and spent afternoons reading in the park. Nothing particularly memorable, but meaningful.

being outside whenever possible
There’s definitely a sense of scarcity in Edinburgh when it comes to summer and warmer days. Being up north, we are spared the 30 to 35-degree heatwaves the rest of the UK has to endure. Who knows how long it will last given the current climate crisis we live in. The weather dictates the rhythm, so when the sun comes out, I go out. I cannot get enough of lying in the grass, reading, journaling, sleeping or munching on whatever snacks I brought with.

enjoying summer delicacies
Going to the farmers’ market to pick up my bi-weekly dose of bread, berries, cherries and nectarines. Eating melon every day of the week, on its own, with feta, olive oil and a crack of pepper, or with mozzarella, a balsamic glaze and a few leaves of basil. Brewing tea in the morning so I can have delicious hibiscus or barley iced tea in the evening. Summer food is colourful, easy, fresh and I’m obsessed.

saying yes more often
I suspect the reason I have been saying yes more often is because it has felt effortless. It doesn’t need to be grandiose, or planned to a T. What matters is that we’re together. Lately, I have been feeling very grateful for my friendships.

Hiking and nibbling our way around the Pentland Hills. Baking cookies so I always have something to bring when we see each other. Driving to the beach after work, dipping my toes in the sea and having an impromptu picnic. Being reunited after friends came back from holiday, spending 20 minutes together with matcha in hand before returning to work. Trying out perfumes at Sephora and getting overwhelmed by all the notes, but laughing about it and just enjoying being together. Hopping on a train to Darlington, heading to the Bowes Museum and being in awe of Vivienne Westwood tailoring, trying out costumes and laughing our hearts out.

Pentland Hills & Gullane Beach

---

MEDIA STACK

source: Prime Video

Blue Heron (2025, dir. Sophy Romvari)

Set in 1990s Canada, the story focuses on a Hungarian immigrant family of six and their struggles to cope with the severe behavioural issues of the oldest son, Jeremy.

The film starts as we observe the family, getting to know them and understanding the issue at hand. It has an anthropological, documentary-like feel to it. At times, we follow Sasha’s perspective, Jeremy’s eight-year-old sister, as she notices things a little more than her two other brothers. Later, we flash forward twenty years to an adult Sasha investigating her family’s past, trying to make sense of it, and filling the gaps in her memory.

Can a film capture the feeling of memory? It seems to be what Sophy Romvari set out to do with Blue Heron, and she does it beautifully.

This family story feels intimate and deeply personal. You can sense the parents’ distress as they try to help their oldest son while also protecting the younger ones. You feel Sasha’s confusion too, watching her brother as a child and later trying to make sense of his situation.

I loved the transition between the past and the present, whether it was the colour treatment or the use of different technology. Growing up in the 1990s, Blue Heron felt particularly nostalgic to me, like a childhood summer in a bottle. There’s something so tender and heartbreaking about watching Sasha piece together a childhood she didn’t fully understand at the time.

The cinematography is very evocative, with lingering shots and observational angles through an old camcorder, a mirror or a gap in a door, which create a more reflective narrative. The movie loops on itself, bringing us back to where we started, like memory circling back on itself. It mimics the circle of life.

I loved how Romvari approaches trauma with such tenderness, and how she handles grief with care. It’s one of those films that will stay with me for a while.

sources: IMDb & Prime Video

Substack articles

i want to do everything, but i do nothing.

In this article, Celine explores why she has so many interests but struggles to actually pursue them, and let me tell you, I felt seen. I never had a passion, a single passion, that I felt compelled to pursue. I’ve always had a multidisciplinary nature, and for a while I was envious and fascinated by people who knew what they wanted to do and went for it. I think that’s probably one reason why I have difficulties with labels, or rather, labelling myself.

the way i fight this one is to embrace the mediocrity and divide failure and my identity. i’m a normal, mediocre person who loves to write, and that’s enough to make it okay to write about whatever i want. i am a person who makes mistakes and can grow by doing things, not overthinking them.

Whenever I write here, or create something, I’m always unsure about sharing it even though I love doing so, especially to be able to exchange with someone else. I write, but I’m not a writer. I just enjoy the act of writing. There might be times when my articles are a little deeper, a little more philosophical, but most of the time, it’s just my musings making their way onto paper or Substack. Allowing myself to do things, to fail at them or to accept their imperfection, isn’t easy but that’s also how I know that I can improve.

Celine identifies three different kinds of “stuckness”: fear of failure and discovering we aren’t as special as we imagined, being overwhelmed by too many possible paths and feeling that choosing one means giving up the others, and finally, being too comfortable in a life that is good enough to create any real urgency to change it. Like her, I have struggled with the first two for a while, but feel like I may be past them. Now I’m in the third phase, where I feel comfortable enough that I don’t pursue anything else. Comfortable, but stuck too.

Ultimately, this article is less about finding one true passion and more about stopping the endless search and starting to act, even imperfectly.

The most dangerous monsters are the ones that only ask you to stay

I found it so interesting how Lauren makes a parallel between The Odyssey monsters and those we encounter in modern life. From this list, I recognised my personal monster as Circe, who represents staying in situations that are comfortable or “good enough” for so long that we lose sight of what we actually want. The examples she shared about feeling stuck in a comfortable life, job or city all hit something in me. And of course, there is nothing wrong in being comfortable except when you don’t know if you’re happy anymore, or if you have just acclimatised to this life. I think this perfectly echoes the previous article, and overall my feeling of being a little stuck lately.

travel journaling 101

I love Mya’s practical guide to travel journaling. She makes it feel accessible rather than like another thing you have to do perfectly. I have yet to put away all the ephemera I collected during my June trip in Scotland. Tickets, receipts, postcards, maps, pressed flowers and other little things collected during a trip can give a journal a sense of place and personality. So I always make it a priority to grab those wherever I go. But once home, daily life catches up on me and everything is set aside for later. Reading her guide made me want to pick an evening after work to just do that. I love how travel journaling preserves the experience, makes the trip linger a little longer and lets us travel back in time through it.

Why I feel icky about the Substack/Pangram partnership

In this article, Sophia explains the reasons why she feels uncomfortable with Substack’s Pangram partnership, and I feel icky about it as well. Of course, Pangram isn’t 100% reliable and still produces false positives that could unfairly accuse genuine writers. I find it a bit comical to use AI to detect the use of AI. Anyway, it sounds like the start of another witch hunt to me.

I also really enjoyed Kiki’s article, AI is my lip gloss, not my face, which is more nuanced on the AI front. She argues that using AI doesn’t automatically make creative work inauthentic. For her, there’s an important distinction between using AI to remove practical barriers, such as dyslexia, research or organising ideas, and asking it to generate the actual thoughts, experiences and voice behind a piece.

I’ll be honest I’m conflicted when it comes to AI. It’s a weird analogy, but you know the phrase: there are no bad dogs, just bad owners. When it comes to AI, I feel similar. In the end, it’s how humans use it and what we decide to do with it. I think there is a distinction to be made between using AI as a tool to check the grammar or organise ideas and using it to produce a whole piece on the “author's” behalf.

i got rid of my phone and i had to go back to therapy

2026 is widely being dubbed the “year of analogue”, as a cultural movement against screen fatigue and AI. There is such a huge amount of content about people getting a flip-phone, getting rid of social media, bricking their phone or doing daily, weekly or monthly analogue challenges, and I’m here for it. But to a certain extent, until we start to romanticise that “digital detox” aesthetic.

In this article, Judit shares her experience of her phone dying and deciding to take it as an experiment, going on a spontaneous digital detox. I loved how nuanced the piece is, as she explains how things were great at the beginning and how a few days later she discovered how phones are like adult pacifiers. Sometimes we numb ourselves by scrolling, using it to escape from our problems, avoid sadness and discomfort. But without a phone, that silence can suddenly become uncomfortable rather than peaceful. You have to confront your problems.

I also like the point she made about going offline being a privilege. Wealthy people may have the resources to replace screens with travel, nature, yoga, retreats, hobbies, and other forms of leisure. Meanwhile, many people rely on their phone for many things and cannot simply put it down. In the end, she points out that removing the phone doesn’t heal the underlying problem. It simply removes one of the easiest ways of avoiding it. Maybe we should focus more on why we reach for our phones to have a better relationship with them and ourselves.

---

MUSIC INTERLUDE

---

BOOKMARKS

My July reading was a wonderfully varied one, taking me from Irish landscapes to Japanese horror, a cosy bookshop and a few family dramas. I found books that surprised me, books that comforted me, and a few that completely pulled me in. I also got to read another Han Kang, which is always a win for me. Following my curiosity turned out to be a pretty good way to keep my usual summer reading slump at bay.

Press Coffee, Edinburgh

Here’s a list of all the books I finished in July:

• All The Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley (memoir)

• Land by Maggie O’Farrell (historical fiction)

• My Dear You by Rachel Khong (short stories)

• Beautiful Distance by Nao-Cola Yamazaki (literary fiction/romance)

• Art Monsters by Lauren Elkin (art/feminism essays)

• Repetition by Vigdis Hjorth (literary fiction)

• Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker (horror/historical fiction)

• Soyangri Book Kitchen by Kim Jee-Hye (cosy fiction)

• Light and Thread by Han Kang (essays)

• The Devoted by Catherine Cho (mystery)

Check out the article below for my full thoughts:

---

Summer doesn’t need to be packed with big plans to feel full. Looking back, it was the little things that made this month for me: afternoons outside, spontaneous plans, good books, a film that lingered, music on repeat, and time spent with people I’m grateful to have around.

That’s what I want to take into the rest of summer. Less pressure to make every day memorable, and more attention to the things that make it meaningful.

What has been making your summer feel like summer? And what small things have been making you happy lately?

Until next time,

Amandine

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like:

third places are an introvert dream

summer, season of openness

drifting through june

---

thank you for reading ♡

you can find me on instagram for more, and if you enjoyed this, consider subscribing, sharing a stroll of thoughts, or supporting my writing here xx