September Energy

Friends, do you make New Year’s resolutions?

I usually do.

Setting goals is my superpower.

Come January 1st, I am armed with my list of things I will conquer in the next 365 days: everything from fitness challenges to financial ambitions to travel plans.

Not all my goals are lofty; one year I resolved to drink more water.

Also, I usually abandon my resolutions by January 7th. Or January 4th.

In fact, I can’t think of a year that I actually stuck with a resolution I made in January. Not even the water one. I’m so meh about New Year’s resolutions now that I didn’t even bother to set any for 2020.

So here we are, on September’s doorstep. In Ontario, we are awaiting the start of school with bated breath and a whole lot of anxious speculation. Effing Covid. Kindergarten should be a hella good time for my son and his peers, what with all the toys having been removed, no carpets left to gather on for Carpet Time, and human contact being STRICTLY VERBOTEN. How does a teacher console an upset child from 2 meters away, anyway? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

Onwards.

Along with the low grade anxiety I’m feeling about my son and me returning to our school buildings, I’m feeling something else. Something good, Friends.

I’m feeling energized.

Energized in the same way I think you’re supposed to feel on January 1st, when you declare your intentions to change your life for the better.

This kind of energy doesn’t come to me naturally in January. But without fail, it is humming in my bones every September.

September is the natural time to begin something new.

For more than 20 years of my life, I was a student. Each grade of elementary and then high school – chock full of newness and hope and beautiful blank notebooks – began in September. That continued into university. As the weather began to cool ever so slightly and we eased into the comfortable days of September, I was once again seized by the energy to take on new challenges, imagine possibilities, and set my bar higher.

And then I became a teacher, and September continued to be the beginning of my year.

Now would be a good time to confess that, just because the energy for positive change would be (predictably) coursing through my blood in September, doesn’t mean that I actually did anything with it.

It was September, Friends. Declarations of change – big and small – were reserved for January.

Maybe it’s all the extra time I’ve had inside my head during these isolating months of effing Covid, but after a great deal of reflection, I have decided that September will now be “the month” when I set big, life-changing goals for the next 365 days and make the plans to put them in motion.

Notice that I said big, life-changing goals. Small goals can and will be set anytime. (You’ll be happy to know that I have been consuming at least 2L of water daily since March.)

But given that I practically vibrate with ‘take action energy’ around this time of year, every year, I am going to start priming myself to take on the bigger goals now…instead of waiting until I’ve torn the cellophane off my brand new monthly wall calendar that I will undoubtedly be given for Christmas. Instead of waiting until we are in the middle of the school year and the gloom of Winter, when my very limited energy must be reserved for other things, such as schlepping myself and my things and my children and their things from the house/car/daycare/school, through snowbanks and over icy patches, every day, twice a day. Whatever energy I am left with will be rightfully reserved for pulling on my sweatpants and making cups of tea.

Friends, September is when I will harness the energy that this time of year naturally evokes and use it to fuel my journey towards my next big goal.

This mama is about to get bold and intentional with her life.

Here it is, my very first September New Year’s Resolution:

By September 1, 2021, I will have completed the first (freakin’ awesome) draft of my (freakin’ awesome) novel for (freakin’ awesome) young adults.

How’s that for bold and intentional, Friends?

Nothing like publicly declaring a lofty goal and attaching a deadline to ramp up the anxiety adrenaline.

To take it one step further, I have added a countdown widget to (somewhere on) my blog to keep me in a perma-state of heightened anxiety keep me on track.

I’m going to do this, Friends.

The September energy is here. It’s time.

Who’s with me? (Er, on setting goals in September instead of in January and/or writing a freakin’ awesome novel…I’m not fussy…company is company.)