August embrace
Cherishing the most fleeting month, year after year.
I’m on my annual summer sojourn away from Austin.
In 2022, I took a full month off, went to Europe, and left my laptop back at home. In 2023, I hightailed it to California, my home state, and went hiking in Mammoth, wine tasting in Paso Robles, and sea otter-seeking in Carmel. This August, I’m back in California, connecting with family, friends, and trees.
I’m working more this month than I’d like, and that’s felt a bit confining. But it’s easy to remind myself that the freelance life I built got me here, to an annual month reveling in nature with some of the people who love and know me most. I’m grateful for my fourth summer as a freelancer, which allows me to choose the closest thing an American girl can to that fully out of office, not even looking at my emails, don’t talk to me before I’ve had my Aperol Spritz-summer that many of our European sisters enjoy.
May this be your reminder to rest in the wildflower field that is August as often as you can.
August is a feeling. Not going away, but arriving back home. Not reaching, but being held.
August is about listening to trees. Letting a butterfly land on your shoulder. Never pulling out your phone other than to ID a flower. Hot spring hopping. Forgetting the peculiar soreness of eyes raw from 10 hours of staring at small, medium, and big screens.
August is breathing in California’s familiar scent when you finally cross state lines. Knowing the state like a native, then discovering it anew like a tourist. Reading Joan Didion on the Golden State, yet again, and knowing what she’s talking about down to your bones.
August is immediately scheming about how to move back to one of the most expensive states. Wondering if you should leave Texas for the 90th time. Wondering how. Wondering if you really know the difference between traveling, trying, and tasting new things — and the bottomless need to escape.
August is the changing curves of the faces you know most intimately, the parents and siblings the charts showed you you’d spend so much less time with after you turned 18. It’s a month spent watching movies on the couch with your parents and being so much more aware of mortality than you were all those months sitting alone in your home office. It’s finally holding the hands of the friend you’ve shape-shifted with since you were 14 years old. It’s feeling more yourself than you are with anyone else, anywhere else.
August is rest. Respite. Slow. No.
August is sun. Naked. Sip. Sandwich.
August is no, I’m not available. Yes, I’d like another. No, I’m staying in. Yes, I’m going out! More, please. Let’s sleep in tomorrow.
It’s the heat rising off the pavement next to the pool, those gauzy hours sunbathing, stolen moments away from the world when you allow your mind, your body, yourself to just be.
August beckons you into the deep end. August is diving in with glee.
Let July be July.
Let August be August.
And let yourself
just be
even in
the uncertainty.
You don’t have to fix
everything.
You don’t have to solve
everything.
And you can still
find peace
and grow
in the wild
of changing things.
Thank you, this was perfect.
Enjoy your California vaca ❤️