For me, Septembers are magical. I know the new year is in January, but September is when my year begins. Maybe I’m institutionalized from spending so much time in and around schools. Maybe it’s just because I hate the winter. January never feels like a time where I’m refreshed and ready to recommit because I’m too busy trying not to freeze my nuts off. But September, coming out of a relaxing summer, getting out of the lay heat and into the crisp fall air, watching kids go to school and leaves change colour. September is a time of beginnings. January might be when things start to get warmer, but certainly not where I live.
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The thing I love most is the feeling of September. The sensation of putting old things to bed and mustering the energy to tackle new things. I have this feeling a lot, some days more than others, but September is like a whole month of it. Since I work at a university, I’m surrounded by the same kind of energy. You have these conversations where people are talking fast while moving their hands and it feels like you can do anything. I had one of those this morning, just for a few moments, and here I am writing. Everyone is coming back or coming in, things are new and exciting and I want to do them all.
I declared a moratorium on crazy schemes during the summer but now, as I write this on my lunch when I’d usually be napping, I’ve got a ton of energy despite a sleepless night. I want to grab this feeling and bottle it for those days when I can’t seem to get out of my pyjamas or when 12 hours of crushing my enemies in Fallen Enchantress seems like a really great idea. I debated on including a list of the things I want to get up to here, but instead I’ll blatantly plug my comeback post on my website where I actually did all that. This isn’t a place for lists, it’s a place for thinking.
I spend a lot of time thinking about that feeling and how I can capture it. That’s half the idea behind all my words of power. They’re tiny ideas that unpack into that feeling and remind me of things that matter. It’s not so much that they help me get things done, but that they allow me to be myself. And I am, when I am myself, a person that gets things done. The worst part about the occasions when that feeling strays is feeling like something else is in the driver’s seat. Like I’m just a passenger in a fleshy husk that meanders about space doing little of consequence. I know the difference between downtime and wasting time, and I know that everyone needs a bit of both.
But in September, I am fully myself. Even when I haven’t slept and spent half the night in a caffeinated high crunching numbers and debating on where to hang all those new prints I got at Fan Expo. It can be hard to focus even, with all this energy. I start to hate pauses. I have a hard drive to reinstall tonight that’s keeping me from making more music or videos, and it aggravates me to no end. So I’m going to keep this short. I love September. It’s when things really begin for much of our lives, a time of change and wonder. And January can get bent. Is there a time of year when you feel most like yourself?
