12:10:2025 Early of October
Apparently this week was busy enough that I forgot to make any notes, but I’ve had enough of it in my head to write up my reflections regardless. I was expecting everything to calm down a bit after fresher’s week, and it has to some degree, but I’ve also realised that that’s dependent on me not viewing every social obligation as mandatory, which I have been doing. I’m now actively trying to get myself out of that mindset because I am really not extroverted enough to live up to it, and I quite dramatically realised midweek that what I’ve wanted more than anything lately is just to be anonymous, not completely alone necessarily but unknown. I’ve got the freedom at the moment to indulge my emotional whims so I went on a solo trip to a nearby city the day after, and since then I’ve felt somewhat liberatingly free from the social network I felt a bit trapped in before. I realised how much autumn in the past has used retreating alone into nature as a coping mechanism and how little I’ve been appreciating that lately, and now I’m trying to explicitly put that in my schedule, time to just get out and get away and be alone with God and nature.
More explicitly autumnal things: it’s cold enough to start layering and wrapping up now, and I didn’t realise how much I missed it. It’s a bit bittersweet because of how distant it’s making me feel from summer, a very definitive marker of time passing, but I’d forgotten how lovely wrapping up for the cold. The radiators have started coming on in the mornings and evenings and I’d forgotten how much I love that, too. It’s been cold enough for me to consider getting my thermals out and for the sunlight to start being really nice. I’m sat in the suntrap at the edge of my bedroom writing this and I really just want to curl up and read or listen to music or just do nothing. I’m trying to let myself just slow down at the moment, take the time to just do nothing and enjoy peace and quiet.
And I’ve been edging my way back into an interest in history, I’ve discovered, over this season. I went on a history trip last Friday and I’ve been applying to do some archival volunteering and realising that my old autumn history interest is still kicking around up in my head somewhere apparently, which is nice to know. Between my academic life I’ve been kicking around in classical music and my library (which I’ve been finding beautiful for therapeutic solitude and actually sorting things out by myself) and pop music again (I have new music again finally! Brand New’s ‘Science Fiction’ and Matt Maeson’s ‘A Quiet and Harmless Living’ and Adrianne Lenker’s ‘Hours Were the Birds’) and just nature again and I’m starting to sort myself out again a bit I think, I’m starting to get back to not being stressed and tired all the time, although the tiredness I think might just remain until I go home, which I’m officially doing at the start of November, and I’ll be home for Firework’s Night, which will be lovely. I wanted to stay here to go to church for All Soul’s, which I’m hoping there will be church for because if not I will just go insane but we’ll see I guess. I don’t know I’m starting to come back to life a little, very slowly, and with little energy. It’s going to be a quiet November and a quiet winter for me I think. I’m really looking forward to going home and just having a week of rest and nothing and walking and home. I should book my train tickets.