your humble narrator.
I feel like August was a roller-coaster month. The month went by so quickly, but also seemed to be a massive slog. Unusual during the summer that people typically never want to end, but I have never really been a summer person.
Good old British weather is having an identity crisis, one that I’d like it to fix if people would be so kind as to stop polluting the Earth. The heatwaves left me incapacitated and I seem to have done nothing but eat and spend money this month. Read more
For a society that is full of people self-diagnosing as autistic, nobody is obsessing over and fixating on music like they should be.
I jest. Sort of.
Last month, I thought about the tragedy of realising you’re in a memory as it is being made, and it made me think about those ineffable feelings that engulf us whenever we hear or smell something familiar.
I think music has fallen into the box of ‘things we’ve tried desperately to optimise’ – skimming through albums, popularising seven second snippets of the catchy parts and going viral with them. We hear way too much music without actually listening to it – there’s a subway take that expressed how I feel about this so well. Read more
If you haven’t read my previous post, go ahead and do that, because it’ll hopefully give you a good insight into the state of my brain at any given moment, firsthand. It may explain why I write the way I do (or, if you know me, act the way I do). You might be surprised. You might not be. You might have already diagnosed me. It’s 2025 and everyone’s autistic!
Back when I was a teenager spending as many free hours after school as possible carefully curating my Tumblr, I had this stupid Confucius quote seared into my brain a little more each time I created a new post (and, for an angsty teenaged youth, this was often).
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop”
I woke up early this morning and decided to stay at home. A slow morning, one that wasn’t riddled with the rigid rules I decided to set myself the day before, a structured check list of errands and things to do. I didn’t go to the gym. I didn’t go for a walk to get in my eight-thousand steps before nine-a.m. I didn’t go to the shops to buy my groceries for the week and I didn’t think about getting in my protein and healthy fats.
I simply woke up, went downstairs, and made myself a tea.
It’s just me and the cat. As soon as he spotted me, he started skulking around and meowing by the door to be let out – but I didn’t want to have to watch over him and devote these first precious hours to preventing his stealthy escape from the barricaded garden walls. Why does he want to do that? Why can’t he just want to be still like me on this slow Sunday morning? But eventually I give in and open the doors; kind of because I’d like to enjoy the fresh air myself this morning, but mostly because his little face and tiny paws propping him up on my legs to be carried have moved me, although I know it is but manipulation. He doesn’t actually want to be carried and he will jump away from me as soon as he feels the warm air on his whiskers.
A love letter to winter.
I gaily (but quietly, I hope) skipped down the stairs at 5:30am this morning. I put on my trainers, I filled up my water bottle. I fumbled around for my house key which, regrettably, is still only attached to one tiny keyring (Lego Voldemort) and slips away from my fingers much too easily, especially when I am wearing a glove.
My eyes flicked mechanically over to the CCTV screen (as it does prior to any time I leave the house, in case there’s a murderer waiting for me) and I immediately did a double take: I could only see a spectral wooosh of blurred white.
I walked back over to the window and peeled aside the netting to find that the street was covered in a thick blanket of fog. Nice, I thought. I checked myself – surely I should have recoiled? Surely I should be grimacing and clutching my chest and saying ‘what is this? I should be asleep. I can’t do it.’? But I wasn’t. There was no plea to return to the warm sanctity of my bed. There was simply alertness in my brain and elation in my heart: I was genuinely happy to be leaving the house. Whilst I have never been one to begrudge the dawn (I’ve always been an early bird, even when it’s dark), I sensed a change from the difficult mornings I had a few weeks ago as my body adjusted. I realised, in the gradual arrival of the end of the year, I had been factory reset to my default setting.