Why I Love September

A friend of mine has been teaching at various colleges ever since she received her graduate degree. When we talk about other careers we might have tried instead of teaching (for her) and freelance writing and editing (for me), she invariably remarks that she would find it hard to give up her summer months for a twelve-month-a-year job. I understand but I never think about those summer months. Still, I realized recently (actually Labor Day weekend), that I still think the year begins with the day after Labor Day. That was when school started (back in the dark ages), and the two or three weeks just preceding Labor Day included a lot of preparation for the change in activity.

I still think that way. This is fitting. September is, after all, National Preparedness Month. (I'll bet you didn't know that.) While others may start thinking about their New Year's Resolutions right after Christmas, I am blessedly free of that impulse.

September is when I consider what I want to accomplish during the coming months and get my plan under way. I clean out closets, go through stacks of book, find more things to set aside for the local charity thrift shop, and in general act like a big change is coming.

This year, in addition to tidying up the closets, I have tidied up my blog, attaching it more or less tightly to my web page. My web maven, a wonderful writer as well as the only woman I know who understands my computer blind spots, Kathleen Valentine, did the job, and I now feel very organized. It won't last but for the moment it feels good.

I've made a list of stories to finish and novel ideas I want to flesh out; I hope to begin one of them soon, when I get my current project into the mail.  Part of this planning comes out of my love of lists--things to do, books to read, little tasks to complete. Crossing things off those lists makes me feel enormously satisfied. And since these lists only contain things I want to do, I never experience wholesale failure, which is usually the case with New Year's Eve resolutions. For me, September is definitely a time of new beginnings.