Good Morning, July Morning 🌅

July 13, 2025

Hey there,

It recently came to my attention that the concept of "July Morning" (e.g., staying up all night or waking up super early, ideally at the seaside, to welcome the sunrise on the 1st of July), was a Bulgarian thing only, and not a global phenomenon. ☀️

Now that I realised this, I started appreciating the curious nature of it all a bit more. On one hand, yeah, you could argue that this is a sunrise like any other, and is by no means a big deal. You could argue that it's overhyped, that people spend too much effort on this weird hipster-like tradition.

But on the other hand, I think it's a perfect example of appreciating the little things in life, just because.

And that's the thing, right? Most things we look forward to — birthdays, holidays, even New Year's Eve — are meaningful only because we decide that they are. July Morning is simply a very obvious example of this. No saint's name attached to it. No historical event. Just a collective agreement to chase the sunrise, an anecdotal start of the summer season.

And there's something quietly powerful about that. It makes me appreciate how many parts of life we can infuse with meaning, not because we're told to, but because we choose to. Waking up early for a walk. Making a warm cup of coffee before sitting down to work. Doing a full reset in the middle of the year, even if there's no calendar telling you to.

Maybe that's the July Morning spirit worth keeping. Not the concert or the road trip or the selfies by the sea, but the quiet decision to notice. To mark the morning. To look at your life and say, "Cool, good job, now let's begin again."

Here are a few "July Morning" moments I think are worth noticing, even if they come on random Tuesdays:

• 🌿 The first breath of cool morning air through the window before the people wake up.
• ☕ Making your first coffee of the day with full presence, no scrolling, no multitasking.
• 🚿 That moment post-shower where you feel clean, upright, and slightly optimistic.
• 🧺 Starting the laundry or tidying your room, not out of duty, but as a little attempt at calming the chaos in your own space.
• 📆 Opening your calendar and saying, "What if today was the start of my best arc so far?"
• 🏃‍♂️ Going for a run even if you didn't feel like it — and realising five minutes in that it's not soo bad.
• 🧠 Remembering something you used to love and giving yourself permission to love it again (working on that bit myself).

They're not cinematic, nor loud.

But they're moments that give you back a little clarity, a little grace, a little forward motion. ⏩

Weekly Insights

• With a few days (a week 'n' a half) of delay, I'm here to drop my weekly insights, specifically those regarding the big event of the year so far — the wedding of my classmate, colleague, and CEO at my job. 🥳
• Other than being a spectacular event (it'll be a very difficult wedding to outdo by the next one 😂_), for me it was also the culmination of some half-a-year-long efforts. Getting myself more in shape, trying to pick a nice outfit, getting a car and driving it to the venue, feeling more confident at my job, with other people, etc — it was a nice checkpoint, at which I got to reunite with a bunch of people I hadn't seen in months, so I could gauge the feeling of whether I was progressing in the right direction or not so much._
• And, well, now that this has passed, and there is no next big event in line in the near future — now my efforts should be less focused on "getting ready by a specific date", and, well, just getting better in all aspects day-to-day, for the long game.

Book Highlight: The Let Them Theory

"The Let Them Theory" by Mel Robbins was the latest book I listened to on Audible, and well, my bad. 🤡

The book's concept is relatively simple and straightforward, I assume anybody can deduce it from the title alone — it revolves around the stoic principle of "letting go", not spending your emotional bandwidth on things outside of your internal locus of control, not feeling responsible for other people and their actions, generally an antithesis of "people-pleasing".

The main flaw is, in my eyes, the fact that it can be summarised so well, which means it didn't really need to be a book — a lengthy Medium article, sure, but a whole 14 or so hours of audio experience was too much. It is filled to the brim with personal anecdotes about the power of letting go, which, after the 3rd one, became increasingly more and more redundant and repetitive. At one point, I found myself playing devil's advocate as to whether or not it wasn't better in some situations to "keep holding on" instead of "letting go".

Maybe that's just the result of the years of reading/listening to similar books — I assume that for a person just dipping their feet in the self-help literature, this may be a good pick. Very generous 3/10 here. 🍬

Worth Watching This Week

The Art Of Making A Plan ( That Actually Works ) by BeyondBeing — a sharp, structured walkthrough of how to design plans that don't just look good on paper.

everything wants you when you want nothing by Alastair — a quiet meditation on detachment and how it weirdly seems to draw the right things back in.

Closing Thoughts

Till next week, stay safe, stay curious, and keep kicking. ✌️