26:10:2025 Late October
Well, I’m officially giving up on catching up with my updates. I’ve got the past few entries written in my doc but I’ve just not gotten around to transferring it so I’m now just committing to waiting until I have a full 4 weeks of entries and I can replace all of them at once. I’m hoping I’ll be able to stay on top of it in November - everything seems to be slowing down and evening out, sort of. I’ve spent a lot of the past week alone and I was right about needing some time to myself. It’s funny, because I feel like there’s such an autumnal tradition of withdrawing and self isolating with such a mixed background to it. But this has been the first time I've really had to actively withdraw socially and also the first time it’s felt like a fully positive thing like oh this actually did fix me a lot. I don’t know, I associate autumn with being alone and feeling alone and sort of abandoned or like nobody cares or like you can just disappear into the night (hello 2022) but this time it has been like. This is a temporary choice I have made to remove myself to just sort myself the fuck out and then return to my friends and social life with a renewed sense of self. And yeah it was effective for once, everything just sort of stopped and I caught my breath, and now I feel at least comfortable in my friendships.
I feel like myself again, which is a huge relief as I was kind of having a huge identity crisis two or so weeks ago. Another angle that has emerged is my gender, which I’ve kind of been dismissing for the past six months or so, but I’m starting to realise is something I need to actually work out. Or, well, I’ve been working it out, and now I need to realise it, which is easier said than done, but I’m actively trying to grow my hair out now, and that’s kind of all I can do in the meantime except maybe talk to my friends about it.
I’ve been reading a lot again - initially for my course, but I found that I was enjoying it and I’ve just kept it up with The Goldfinch, which I’ve been reading since the start of September (it’s a beast of a book) and it feels like it’s been bringing me back to where I started at the beginning of the September, back to culture and art. I had a meeting about volunteering in the archives early in the week and I’m really looking forward to starting, to having a new place to go and person to be in November. I’m trying to follow my instincts like I did more in summer, and focus more on the opportunities I do have rather than the ones I don’t. For the moment, I’m fairly given up on music - I’ve heard that I’m not getting a cello any time soon, and it seems I won’t be hearing any church music for a while. That matter I’m taking into my own hands to some extent (I have a long choral music playlist now) but for the moment it seems best to let that one go. I’m realising that in September and early October I was holding onto everything so hard and with so much effort and now I’m just trying to let go and go where the wind takes me. Which apparently is books and archives and corduroy and growing my hair out. That can work for me.
My sleep problems have been returning, and I’ve been ill, and I’ve been giving up on always trying to be productive or creative. I’ve been spending a lot of time doing what I did a lot of quite unsuccessfully back in 2021 - trying to find myself, I suppose. I’m back to my archetyping, my lists and pinterest boards. I’m yet to make a playlist but I’ll get back to you on that. It feels much healthier than it used to - less me trying to control my identity, more trying to piece it together. Checking back in on who I’ve become, and I’ve been realising that I am someone, actually, and I have been becoming, even if it feels like this autumn has been a car crash. I’m trying to shed my old skins that no longer fit me (geopolitics newsletters; considering myself male; etc) and let myself grow into whoever I end up being. It’s been a relief. A lot of the past week has felt like a relief, like I’m breathing, finally. It’s making me look forward to the future again, all my plans stretching out in front of me. I have someone to be and someone to become. And it’s gonna be November! It’s so cold and I’m ill again and I’m drinking so many hot drinks and wearing so many layers and questioning my gender and what the fuck is even going on, I’m not sure, I’m just doing it. You told me to go and I’m going. I’m going somewhere, I guess.