September! … It has warmth, depth, and colour. It glows like old amber.
– Patience Strong
Well, even in my very late 40s there’s something about September that makes me think of new starts, new beginnings, new possibilities. And, even for me, it’s been a while since September meant I started a new academic year. It’s fun though now to see how excited Q is for a new school year to begin! So even though it’s still August, today’s post is dedicated to September.
September also reminds me that rest is as important as activity to growth – the trees are starting to drop their leaves, animals foraging in earnest, the sun seems less strong.
I took most of the summer off from everything really – my folks were away a lot, #PandaCat died, we got a new puppy, house stuff was happening etc. – and so I was content to just coast really through July and August and now towards the end of August my brain is getting excited about structure and schedule and habit-forming.
So habits – the last time I did this was in June when I tried to think of a theme to work around. I had all these grand plans but only kept a few going. And in reviewing them now, a couple are still important and so I’m going to start again with them in mind.
SELF focus for September:
❶ schedule – a day
❷ mindfulness – being present
❸ health – menopause
Schedule: I am going figure out what I would like “a day” to look like. Three different days actually: in-office work day, WFH work day, non-work day.
Mindfulness – just something I’m always working on; whether it’s a bit of reading about stoicism, the Calm app, yoga. Something.
Health – read the damn menopause book. That time is creeping up slowly but surely and I really want to be sure I have some sort of idea about what’s going on. We don’t talk about this stuff enough and I need to learn.
Also for health – I had an appointment with a specialist clinic for weight management and my own doc as well. I am waiting for a referral to a sleep study and in the meantime I’m going to start walking more in general and focusing more on my health.
HOME focus for September:
❶ minimalism – organize/declutter
❷ mindfulness – being present – family-sized 😉
We live in a fairly large house. The problem with this of course is that we acquire enough stuff to fill the large house. And then some. This will really probably be the focus every month for HOME but key tasks for September for decluttering:
① Lisa’s Stuff – organize jewellery; what do I want to keep; offer the rest to family / friends and then sell / donate what’s left
② Q’s Stuff – this was going to hopefully be done over the summer but we never quite got there. So we’re still going to work on getting everything out of Q’s rooms and really clean and maybe repaint them etc. We’ll continue to do a bit every day and then hopefully over one of the weekends between now and Thanksgiving we’ll get the big stuff done.
③ Art – hang more of the art I love and offer up the stuff we no longer adore.
And a mindfulness focus too. I’m going to try and encourage us to each pick an activity to do sometime in September together – whether it’s walk in the park or a movie night with popcorn on the pull-out bed. Sort of like a “family date.” Wish me luck 😉
