17:08:2025 Mid August
Losing summer's silence, realising I've moved on, the end of August's mundanity
24:08:2025 Late August
August in nature, anxiety & apprehension, autumn plans in motion
31:08:2025 End of August
Fulfilling old dreams, anticipation of September, bravery
& change
17:08:2025 Mid August
Losing summer's silence, realising I've moved on, the end of August's mundanity
Beginning in August makes sense to me. It's when the next chapter starts to emerge from out of summer's desolation, I think. That's been the past couple weeks for me, but I guess more this week: it's really starting to feel like summer's ending, now, and the new year is beginning. Or at least the plans for beginning are starting. My annual isolation is ending, although it was a lot less severe this year than it has been in the past. I've been thinking I might go off of my socials for the last 2 weeks of summer but it's not really practical considering the committee prep I should be at least staying aware of. But the intention is there at least.
So the stillness has been broken. I emailed the director of music last Sunday and spent Monday wondering if I was going to get a reply that day or in several weeks time. Tuesday brought my ex into my messages for the first time in months, and really has made me reflect on my summer from a new perspective. I spent Tuesday processing - went for a swim, as seems to be my summer ritual for dealing with feelings regarding my ex (it's only really happened 3 times now, and swimming is very much its own thing, but I really appreciated having that kind of seasonal ritual to fall back on). After that the mundanity set back in and I realised just how different mine and my ex's summer's have been: they, apparently, have been thinking a lot over the past few months about a conversation we had, and want to talk again. I've spent the past few months watching the ending of that heartbreak, and, frankly, moving on. To go back to work on Wednesday, back to that mundanity, and realise I care more about whether I can still read bass clef than what they're up to really made me feel the weight of this summer and the months we've spent apart, the months I've spent becoming more and more myself again, letting summer swallow me, drifting further and further.
I say I spent Tuesday processing - a fairly accurate way to explain it, actually, but I found once I'd finished my bus ride with Lorde's David on repeat I was very content to be absolutely swallowed by sorting through classical music vinyls and running around the city (unsuccessfully) looking for postcards. The classical music seems to be sticking, which I'm glad about, because as I said, that email got sent and it's not getting unsent. I've given up on buying a cello and am now fully relying on the director of music to help me out - which I'm not too upset about because he seems nice and it's an excuse to make a proper acquaintance with him rather than our bizarrely nonexistent current relationship. It's an echo of changing my degree last year, to be sure, the mid-August email to a member of staff followed by the slightly terrified wait because you care way too much about this thing you only decided you wanted to do a week ago. I love how time repeats itself like that.
The mid-week I spent at work. Work is this August's boring mundanity, a more recent development really, or maybe before it was just more lonely and romanticised and now it's employment. But these last couple days I've been wandering, drawing, again, I'm making it through my summer sketchbook still, I think I'll reach halfway through the notebook which was my goal, playing guitar, and this evening I finally went blackberry picking with my sister. I've been putting it off for weeks - the blackberries have been out since late July, I just refuse on principle to start picking until mid August, it's an August activity to me at the earliest - but we got there. I'm still reminded of that time between year 7 and year 8 when I had Hollywood by MARINA stuck in my head and I was fucking around with my hair. The summer-fucking-around-with-my-hair I think might not be one of the changes that sticks this year, but we'll see. I'm trying to let myself be flexible and changeable into the autumn - I've really enjoyed just letting go and following my intuition this summer but it feels like a summer exclusive thing. My 'don't feel bound to pre- or post-summer you' feels like it's grounded in the transcience of summer - you experiment in summer because it's the time between times when you get to disappear for 3 months and emerge a different person than you went in. But autumn can be all playfulness when I let it, so hopefully I can let some of it through.
I've been feeling very changed these past couple weeks. Or the change has set in, I suppose. It's weird having an ex actively transitioning, because they're changing in a much more obvious way - I found out earlier that they'd openly changed their name and pronouns - but they're still thinking about me, whereas I'm much less obviously changed on the outside except for some new jewellery, a couple new clothes and very slightly different hair, and honestly just feel like I'm completely, I don't know. Detached, I guess. I'm gone. I'm a million miles away. But in a way that feels very back to form - that'll be coming home for you, I guess, but also just the solitude of being single. I feel the most myself I've ever been, maybe. I feel like every version of me that's come before. It's unusual for the end of summer/start of autumn, when I usually feel very brand new. My new is the old. I am who I was, but on purpose this time, maybe.
The last heatwave of the year is over now, and the last busy days of work with them, and I've finished all of my trips to visit my friends, and I'm starting to get into the album's I've bookmarked for September (No Place Like Home by Vacations, Reading Writing and Arithmetic by the Sundays), and this summer's expansive silence has been shattered, and plans for when I'm back in my uni city are in place. It's an ending of summer, for sure. One of several. I'm sure I'll come back to that.
24:08:2025 Late August
August in nature, anxiety & apprehension, autumn plans in motion
I've really enjoyed actively keeping notes on my experiences this week. My last entry was all kind of done on the Sunday, but this week I've been jotting down ideas all week which has been really fun. And it's helped that this week has felt so prototypically August, like someone decided it should all be concentrated in a 7 day period. Even my annual August insanity - I described it once as being when everything that died in July starts "growing back wrong" - happened almost entirely yesterday in a very weird 24 hours (don't ask to be honest. August insanity stays in August lmao). Thinking about it all in context feels really grounding to me now - as everything starts changing I'm feeling a bit unbalanced and unmoored, but the reliability of the months is grounding me. It's just August, just the transition from summer into autumn. Of course it will be like this.
Apprehension has been a pretty strong feeling this week. It's just that I've become comfortable in summer, really, but as always at the centre of summer is its ephemerality, and I know I couldn't have thrown myself into summer with such force without the knowledge that it would end. The change of autumn has been a little intimidating - I left my uni town early because I found it too painful to stay, and I'm hoping that pain has healed enough for being back there to not sting anymore, but the worry remains. I suppose it's also the social elements of autumn I'm finding intimidating. I've spent a lot of summer alone, and I've really appreciated that space and privacy, but I know there won't be a lot of that in autumn. It helps to know that hand in hand with autumn's vibrancy of social life usually comes a more sociable and outgoing me, or at least a version of myself that can face those social situations when they come and disappear into the woods for some solitude when they leave. I've got a few weeks to adjust, as well - I imagine the first week back won't be too dissimilar to my summer in terms of time spent alone, but I have a couple of friends who will be around, and people will trickle in until the business of fresher's week. It also helps that I know most people already this year. I'm sure I'll get into the swing of it.
To help with preparing psychologically for that change, I've been thinking a lot about autumn, what I want to achieve and what my goals are. Relearning cello is an easy one to start with - I've found out I'll be able to loan one and I'm determined enough that I'll make the time to practice if it kills me - and alongside that comes my general aim to become passionate about learning again. I've spent summer intellectually resting and I do feel in that sense rejuvinated and ready to start learning again, for pleasure as well as for my degree. I've got my autumn journal now, my written counterpart to my summer sketchbook, which I'm hoping will get me thinking and writing and philosophising and research to my heart's content. As well as that, I've been thinking about how my style might change this autumn. I got my new lightweight jacket on Tuesday, which will inevitably become integral to my wardrobe in autumn, and with it I feel like I'm starting to discover autumn's self - what I'll look like, dress like, what I'll be doing. It's always fun to watch yourself changing with the seasons, I think.
The final thing I wanted to talk about: nature, the weather, August in the world. This week has been beautiful - it's been cooler, leaves are falling in places, people are starting to say it feels like autumn - to me this is August at its most August. The tiny stream by the park near my house has dried up; fields are overgrown and blooming with so many flowers; crickets are buzzing, butterflies are fluttering around; there are blackberries everywhere, most of them too sweet for me by now (yes I have been eating insane amounts of blackberries); on Wednesday morning we even got the full force of August's gloom, with misty rain and rolling grey clouds over the fields. I was listening to In Words by Marika Hackman all morning and by the time my afternoon at work had finished the sun was shining low and golden and listening to the slower songs on MARINA's Froot (I've been appreciating Weeds and Solitare especially) felt like the most natural thing in the world. That afternoon, and all week, really, the evening on Friday I spent drinking with my friends, my afternoon wandering around the market in the city yesterday, fixing my bike again, God there are so many things I haven't talked about - anyway, suffice to say, August's mundanity has become beautiful, as it always does.
31:08:2025 End of August
Fulfilling old dreams, anticipation of September, bravery & change
Here's the end of summer, I suppose. It's been a good one. I'm sad it's over, which I really wasn't expecting to be, and the apprehension for autumn is still very present, which is also unexpected. But I've been pretty ambitious in my plans for this month and after's summer's restfulness I suppose anything was going to feel like a lot.
I always forget how much September feels like a time of anxiety to me. It's been getting worse over the years, and I'm sure a lot of my worry this year is a consequence of last September, which was disproportionately bad, and I know it'll be significantly better this time, but that doesn't mean it's not weighing on me a little. But I've been thinking of September also as a time of bravery, as a time when anxiety rises but I rise up to meet it as well. I'm trying to get back into the habit of doing things that scare me in anticipation of getting back into music, which I'm finding pretty intimidating. I made it to mass alone this morning which felt pretty monumental - I spent most of last year finding new excuses why I couldn't and wouldn't, and it's nice to prove to myself that I can. The unfortunate side effect of that was the return of my physical anxiety symptoms - tremours, specifically - that seem to haunt me every September. But it's nice to think that I'm living the life I want to be living, I suppose.
I've been thinking about that a lot this morning as well. I've moved into my new house now and this morning was idyllic. I sat drinking tea and watching the birds at 7am and sang Garden Song by Phoebe Bridgers to myself. It's a song I listened to a lot in February, in between being horrifically ill and getting very distracted by Killing Eve and Hozier and everything else, when I could feel that I wasn't quite myself and wanted to create that quiet to find myself again. I never quite managed it then, but I have now. It reminds me a lot of planning and dreaming about this year and all the things that I'd do. Now I'm living in the house I chose back then and doing everything I wanted to and more - it feels like my present is grounded in my past, which I really appreciate. And it feels like this September is mirroring parts of that February, maybe - all the things I wanted to do then but couldn't, or didn't. But I'm here now, exactly where I wanted to be.
It feels now like August has already ended. Everywhere leaves are starting to fall, and the weather in this city's much less summery than at home. The days before I left were certainly August though - I noticed that the sunlight seemed faded and pale, which I've not noticed before. We had a lot of thunder though, and dark threatening clouds, and rain, and the air felt charged, literally and figuratively. Now the other feeling seems to have taken over - this yearning for comfort and warmth that I definitely associate with September, of wanting to stay at home and wrap up warm and shield yourself from the world. I'm glad there's time to change, but I want to get to know this new house more, and I've started composing music as well, which should keep me busy. I love seeing what new hobbies and ideas I pick up around this time of year. I never change exactly how I expect to; there's always something I don't see coming. This year it's the music, and music as an art form in itself rather than a way to present lyrics. I don't care too much about other people experiencing what I'm making - I'm just making it for the sake of it, instead.
This has felt like a short entry, but I've not had much to say. I've not been making so many notes this week, just watching the time fall through my fingers. It's going to be interesting seeing how it all turns out. In the meantime I think we're doing May again, reading and exploring with public transport and Somersault by Beach Fossils. May and September are my favourite months, my most emotionally vulnerable months. I don't like making assumptions about a way a month's going to go but it feels difficult not to make those predictions - right now it feels like May and late January - mid February and September-October of 2022. It feels personal and small and vulnerable. By the end of September it may well be something else entirely. I'll be looking forward to it.