September

The Return to Life

Although I have been at work all summer apart from two weeks off in July, something about September that feels like a return to life. As I sit on my balcony on this Labour Day,

I feel the anticipation that all those returning to school feel.

The feeling is a bit strange, when you think about it.

It almost gives off January energy, but without all the pressure. September feels less about resolutions and more about expectations and possibilities. Maybe that sense of possibility is a holdover from summer and its long days, when it somehow feels like there is enough time for everything.

Summer is still lingering. The days are still warm like today. The trees haven't quite begun their great letting go. And yet, somewhere around the first week of September, I always feel it.

The urge to begin again.

Not fast, but slowly.

Last September, I wrote about this month being the in-between. That strange little space where summer hasn't completely left us, but autumn is beginning to make itself known. I still think September is the in-between, but this year it feels like something else too.

A return.

Maybe that's the thing about returning to an idea a year later. You aren't quite the same person who thought about it the first time. You've lived since then. Things have happened. You've learned some things, forgotten others, changed your mind, changed it back, and hopefully become a little more yourself and I have.

So when we return, we aren't really returning to the exact same place. The extra day felt off felt good, like my friend wished for on Friday that it would be a long weekend, at it was.

We're meeting it again, back to work, back to ride the subway, back to the routines, but we can always return to our true selves.

Going Back to School

Maybe this feeling comes from all those years of returning to school. New shoes. New teachers. New subjects. Fresh notebooks without doodles of flowers and eyes filling the margins yet.

Even now, long after anyone expects me in a classroom, September makes me feel as though I should be learning something.

And perhaps I should.

I've been thinking lately about why we ever stopped giving ourselves school years. I don't necessarily mean going back to school. I'm not trying to take out any student loans. I mean the idea of having a season devoted to learning something simply because we don't know it yet.

Why should learning belong only to that part of our lives from 1 to 25?

There is still so much I want to know. So much I want to become better at. There are books I haven't read, recipes I haven't mastered, questions about myself I haven't answered, places I haven't seen, and ways of living I haven't tried.

Somewhere along the way, adulthood can become very focused on knowing. We are supposed to know how to do our jobs, manage our homes, raise children, navigate relationships, handle money, make decisions and generally know what we're doing.

There isn't always much room left for being a beginner.

But I think there should be.

There is something freeing about saying, I don't know how to do this yet.

Maybe I will be terrible at it.

Maybe I won't.

Maybe I will discover something I love.

Maybe I'll discover that I never want to do it again.

Either way, I will have learned something.

Life, I think, should be continuous learning and growing.

So this September, I want to go back to school.

Not literally.

I want to return to curiosity and wonder.

An Old Practice in a New Notebook

I keep coming back to this thought: an old practice in a new notebook.

We spend so much time talking about what's new. New year. New goals. New habits. New routines. A new version of ourselves.

But I'm beginning to wonder if designing a life isn't always about creating something new.

Sometimes it might be about returning to something old with new eyes.

There are things we leave behind without ever really deciding to leave them. A hobby gets pushed aside because life becomes busy. A morning ritual disappears because our schedule changes. The book gets placed on the nightstand and somehow stays there for six months. We stop making a particular meal. We stop calling someone as often. We stop sitting outside in the morning.

Nothing dramatic happened.

Life just moved.

And maybe September gives us a natural place to look back at some of those things and decide whether any of them deserve to come with us into this next season.

Not everything will.

That's important too.

Returning isn't about romanticizing the past or trying to become an earlier version of ourselves. We've lived since then. Maybe something that once mattered doesn't anymore. Maybe something we thought we had outgrown is exactly what we need now.

That's part of designing a life too.

Not endlessly adding more, but paying attention to what stays, what goes, and what is worth returning to.

For me, I want to return to the kitchen after months of wanting to be anywhere but near a hot stove. To the books left half-read on the nightstand. To routines that somehow disappeared during a summer of possibilities. To conversations around the table that last longer than the meal.

A return to the table.

A return to home.

A return to ourselves.

September Doesn't Need to Be January

There are four months left in this year.

I don't say that to create panic about time running out or to make September another deadline. In fact, I want almost the opposite.

Lately, the speed at which life is moving feels astounding. Weeks become months. Seasons seem to arrive just as quickly as the last one disappeared. We photograph things before we've experienced them, move on to the next thing before the current thing is finished, and somehow find ourselves asking, How is it September already?

Maybe September doesn't need to be another month we race through.

Maybe we slow down just a bit.

Long enough to enjoy the sun still warming our faces before the crisp fall air rolls in. Long enough to notice the subtle change in the light. Long enough to make dinner and sit at the table. Long enough to read a chapter instead of scrolling for an hour. Long enough to try something we're bad at without immediately deciding we're not good at it.

Four months is still a meaningful amount of time.

It's enough time to learn something. Enough time to return to something. Enough time to change something. Enough time to become better at something we are currently wonderfully bad at.

But there is no race.

September isn't January.

We don't need a list of resolutions or a completely redesigned version of ourselves by October.

Maybe we just need to pay attention.

Our September Curriculum

So this month, Onyx & Milk is going back to school.

We'll explore learning and curiosity, but not only in the traditional sense. I want to think about what it means to remain a student of your own life—to keep discovering what interests you, what nourishes you, what makes a home feel like home, what brings people back to a table, and what makes an ordinary day feel worth remembering.

We'll return to some old practices and try some new ones. We'll make things. We'll cook things. We'll read. We'll ask questions. We'll practice being beginners.

And we'll pay attention.

Because I have a feeling that what we repeatedly pay attention to matters more than we realize.

We'll come back to that thought later.

And perhaps we'll buy a new notebook, even if we don't technically need one. I'll share one of my favorites, because apparently part of my personal curriculum still includes an unreasonable affection for beautiful notebooks.

THE SEPTEMBER RETURN

A small journal for beginning again.

A companion to this month's Onyx & Milk exploration of returning, learning, noticing and beginning again.

But maybe that isn't such a bad thing.

Sometimes an old practice deserves a fresh page.

Last September, I thought September was the in-between.

I still do.

But a year later, I understand that space a little differently. The in-between isn't empty. It is a place to look around before continuing. A place to notice where we've been and consider what comes with us into whatever is next.

We don't have to figure it all out today.

We have September.

So let's take our time.

Welcome to September.

Welcome back to life, to home, and to a table.