September always reminds us to show up to class. Literally and figuratively.

After everything the summer has brought to the surface, there is something about September that makes us want to get our lives together. The notebooks come out. The calendars get reorganized. We start thinking about routines, projects, the house, the closet, the things we said we would do before the year is over. There is this collective feeling that it is time to lock in.

But before we do all of that, I think we need to give ourselves a minute.

I’m writing this from the East Coast, where the weather over the next few days is looking especially gloomy, and honestly, it feels fitting. Not because September is here to dim anything, but because transitions rarely happen with a perfectly clear sky. Sometimes there is a little weather involved. Sometimes you need a few gray days to process what the brighter ones revealed.