September is my favourite month, leaves fall from the trees, jumpers come back on. It’s the start of all things cosy. It feels like a new beginning somehow. Sunburn, eating outside and hay fever are gone and in comes boots, hot chocolate, the colour orange. I try to make September resolutions. I look back on the huge bite I chewed off in January and pick just one or two things for the rest of the year. The beginning of the year feels like you have so much time, and it’s hard to keep track when you’re living it. But September to January is perfect. I know how the year has begun and middled. I see the rest of the year like a straight road to the horizon; it’s something I can walk towards, knowing, mostly, how the terrain shall be.

At the beginning of the year, I said I would do six new things, that I would indulge myself with six moments of ‘looking with my hands’. I have done a few things, but they inevitably bunched up at the start of the year and then slowly petered out. I have new goals now, tangible and ethos based that I would like to do with what I have left.

First, is that I would like to fly a kite. I remember when I was a kid, my dad would drive my sister and I up Box Hill and we’d fly. It was so windy our hair would whip about our faces. My dad would throw the kite up a few times before it caught. Then he’d pass me the handle, and I’d hold it with two hands, arms stretched out to the sky. It would be so strong it felt like I was going to take off. I’d very much like to capture a bit of that feeling again.

I’d also like to listen to music in the car. To drive around with someone (have someone else drive, I’m a horrible driver) and listen to some sing along songs. I used to do that with my friends after school when I was in sixth form. Living in central London means I have no reason to drive now. I might not be able to do this one, unless I can find a nice uber driver and see if they’ll accommodate my dream. I think if I ask nicely enough, they may find it in their heart to do it.

I read this wonderful book recently, called Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. The title Bird by Bird comes from an anecdote about her ten-year-old brother having a project about different birds that he left to the last minute.

We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

It is a story that stayed with me. When I find myself flossing my teeth, folding my clothes or cleaning the watermarks off my glasses all while I wait for my toast to pop, I stop and think, ‘bird by bird’, and then I watch the bread turn golden. Lamott suggests various approaches to writing and life in her book. She talks about how not everything has a solution and that the word solution,

feels so fixative, and maybe we have gone beyond fixing. Maybe all we can do is make our remaining time here full of gentleness and good humour.

When I read this, it was like something sweet had touched the top of my head and I thought, that’s exactly it, to live with ‘gentleness and good humour,’ to let go of the outcome because there are so many things that I just cannot know; that can be my September ethos resolution.

All week I thought about how to live with gentleness and good humour. It’s rather hard to turn that into action. Then I watched Pocahontas for the first time in years. She runs barefoot through the forest and into the river. She wears no watch, has no feeling of obligation. She has a strong sense of heart, and she follows it. She stands at the river edge and wishes to not know what’s coming around the bend. She never has to forgive herself because she has not set weighty expectations on her shoulders. She simply embraces what’s in front of her and looks at her life with curious doe-eyes. I watched her and decided that being more free spirited is the path. To stop anticipating the future because none of that exists yet and I simply cannot know all the outcomes. To let the river bend where it may and say thank you.

I will wait for a nice windy day to fly my kite. I’ll feel my hair about my face and hear the leaves rustle, and I’ll know it’s my time. I’ll put everything else down. No toast will be waiting for me. Every day, I’ll try to think of my heart and what I want to do. I’ll let myself off for whatever I don’t feel like doing. I’ll giggle and be sweet and slow. My shoulders will drop from my ears, my jaw will unclench, I’ll sing along with the uber driver. I’ll not worry about every decision I make, and I’ll not try to foresee the future. I’ll embrace all of it, and by the end of the year, I’m sure I’ll find myself far happier, far more free spirited, far less prophetic, and living with far more gentleness and good humour.