Early September, Labor Day, has always felt more like the New Year to me than any actual new year. My birthday is only a couple months earlier, so I feel like I’m still new to my age, and school resolutions were always more powerful to me than New Year’s. After all, summer break meant I hadn’t seen my friends for three months. The teachers were new. And I was a military kid, so half the student population would be new anyway.
The slate could be as clean as I could make it.
I could walk into the school doors with confidence.
I could definitely get straight As.
I could be the upcoming lead in the school play.
It was possible.
Even nature, in my mind, isn’t stopping at this time of year, but resetting. Trees are shifting their leaves, shedding their old foliage and creating a blank slate, providing the space for something new to grow.
After so many years of conditioning by the American school calendar, Labor Day week feels like my New Year. Like now is the time I should make resolutions and goals.
Some might say that I must’ve loved school, but to be honest, I never loved school, only learning. My grades were never great and the pain of having to navigate so many people every day often meant I skipped.
I’m a high achiever but never thrived in such a cultivated environment, which will probably surprise people who know me. My nose is always in a book. I watch documentaries for fun. And I’m currently writing an essay on how the new school year feels like my New Year for crying out loud. But it’s not because of school itself—just the shift in the air school time creates.
The possibilities.
School supplies are out—big fat notebooks with clean pages waiting to be filled by colorful gel pens. Opening those new packs and testing the ink on new pages. Pencils copiously sharpened. New ring binders popped open and ready to hold multi-colored folders—currently empty, but ready to receive new knowledge and information.
Deciding just where to put the decorative stickers on the new water bottle because you want to send just the right message of who you are and what you stand for—and right now those blank spaces mean you can be anything.
I love this moment where possibilities seem endless, like you can change yourself, you can course correct. And I imagine the trees are taking this moment to cleanse themselves of old habits, leaving themselves bare for a little while so they can restart. Some people may think it’s in the spring, during the restarting, the reawakening that things begin. But I believe the work starts with shedding the old…and that work begins in nature now, with autumn.
So I will take a deep, giddy breath and get ready for the larger work now to be done—shedding old ways so new growth can emerge.
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