Every year, September seems to arrive much faster than I expect it to. One minute we're waiting for the first really warm day of summer, and the next we're noticing that it's getting dark earlier and wondering how there can possibly be only a few months left in the year.
I think September has a way of making time suddenly feel more noticeable. In June, the year still feels wide open. There are months ahead of us, summer is just beginning, and December seems impossibly far away. Then September arrives and, without meaning to, we start measuring what's left. There are holidays appearing in the stores, conversations about winter that nobody really wants to have yet, and that little realization that another year is moving along whether we're ready for it or not.
For some people, that realization probably comes with a list of all the things they haven't done yet. I know how easy it is to look back at plans made months ago and wonder what happened to them. Maybe there was something you were going to finish this year, somewhere you wanted to go, something you wanted to learn, or a change you were sure you'd make. Then regular life filled the space between January and September, as regular life tends to do.
But I've been thinking about whether we're looking at it the wrong way.
Instead of September reminding us how much of the year is gone, maybe it can remind us how much of it is still here. Almost four months isn't nothing. That's a whole season and then some. There is still time for quiet Sunday mornings, projects that have been sitting unfinished, conversations we've been meaning to have, places we've wanted to visit, books we've wanted to read, and ordinary afternoons we haven't lived yet.
That doesn't mean September needs to become another January. We don't need a new set of resolutions or a list of everything we have to accomplish before midnight on New Year's Eve. I'm not sure any of us need another reason to feel like we're falling behind. Maybe it's less about asking, What haven't I accomplished this year? and more about asking, What would I still like to make room for?
The answer might be something very small. Maybe you want to spend more time outside before the cold settles in. Maybe there's a friend you've been meaning to call, a recipe you've wanted to try, something sitting half-finished on your craft table, or a place close to home you've driven past a hundred times and always thought you'd visit someday. Maybe you'd simply like a few evenings when you don't feel as though you have to be doing something productive.
I think we sometimes underestimate how much life happens in the ordinary spaces between the things we consider important. We remember vacations, holidays, birthdays, accomplishments and big changes, but our lives are mostly made up of Tuesdays. They're cups of coffee, drives home from work, conversations in the kitchen, dogs following us from room to room, unfinished projects on the table, and those few quiet minutes at the end of the day when nobody needs anything from us.
There are a lot of ordinary days left between now and the end of December.
Last week I wrote about standing in that little space between summer and fall, when one season hasn't quite ended and the next hasn't completely arrived. Maybe September gives us another kind of in-between space, too. Enough of the year has passed that we know it didn't unfold exactly the way we expected, but there's still enough ahead that we don't know how the story ends.
I kind of like that.
There’s still time left in the year.