September Is My Personal New Year: A Slow Living Reset
Updated: Sep 4
There has always been something about September that feels more like a new year to me than January ever has.
January 1 feels arbitrary. Somewhere along the way, the Romans shuffled the calendar around, January landed at the front, and eventually the billion-dollar planner industry apparently said, Yep. This is when everyone shall completely reinvent themselves.
It doesn't even have the decency to line up with a solstice or an equinox.
September, though?
September makes sense to me.
Maybe it's all those years of back-to-school conditioning. Fresh notebooks. New pencils. Clean desks. New schedules. The feeling that summer was ending and something new was beginning.
Or maybe it's because my birthday falls near the end of summer, making September feel like the beginning of my own next trip around the sun.
Whatever the reason, September 1 has become my personal New Year's Day.
Not because I need a new me.
I quite like this one.
But because this time of year makes me want to look around at my home, my schedule and my own internal mapping system and ask:
What do I want to carry with me into this next season?
A little guidance for the week ahead
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A Reset Isn't Starting Over
I think we've made resetting our lives far more complicated than it needs to be.
We decide we're going to change something and immediately start looking for a new planner, a new morning routine, a new organizational system, twelve new goals and possibly a water bottle large enough to require its own seat belt.
Everything gets tossed into the metaphorical air so we can rebuild ourselves from scratch. I don't want to do that.
One of the things slow living has taught me is that I don't need to constantly reinvent my life. Most of the time, I just need to pay attention to the one I'm already living.
So my September reset begins with a few questions:
What's working?
What isn't?
What have I outgrown?
What am I curious about now?
Some things stay exactly as they are. Some need a little adjustment. And some have simply finished their season.
There is something incredibly freeing about realizing I don't have to burn everything down just because I'm ready for something new.
My Personal Curriculum
For a good part of this year, I've been experimenting with something I call my personal curriculum.
It sounds far more official than it actually is.
Basically, I choose two or three things I'm genuinely interested in and give myself dedicated time to learn about them.
No goals.
No elaborate plans.
No certificates waiting for me at the end.
I might watch a video, listen to a podcast, read a chapter of a book, find an article or simply follow something interesting far enough down the rabbit hole to see where it takes me.
There isn't a test at the end. Nobody is grading me. I don't have to become an expert. I don't even have to do anything with what I learn.
I'm allowed to be interested in something simply because I'm interested in it.
Imagine that.
I know myself well enough to know that "I'll get to it sometime" usually translates into "I will absolutely forget this exists," I give my curriculum a little structure.
I choose specific days and carve out small blocks of time - usually thirty minutes or less.
That's it.
Enough structure to help me return to it.
Not enough structure to turn curiosity into another obligation.
I also deliberately limit myself to only a few subjects. I'm curious about approximately seven thousand things at any given moment, but trying to study all of them means I'm not really giving my attention to any of them.
I choose the things that fit where I am right now. Things connected to the life I'm living or the direction I'm moving. Things I can experiment with immediately if something I learn makes me think, Oh. I want to try that.
And then, every couple of months, I revisit my curriculum.
I'm Allowed to Change the Syllabus
The first time I reassessed my subjects, one stayed.
One went away completely.
And one morphed into something related but more specific.
Now I'm doing it again.
One subject is staying because I'm still curious and there is more I want to explore.
One isn't exactly changing, but I'm narrowing the focus and going deeper into one particular part of it.
And one has run its course for now.
Not because I failed at it.
Not because I mastered it.
I'm simply ready to learn about something else.
That's another thing I'm beginning to appreciate about creating my own curriculum: I'm allowed to change the syllabus.
There is no requirement that something I chose three months ago must remain important to me today.
Curiosity changes.
Life changes.
I change.
My curriculum gets to change with me.
And this September, I'm adding something I've been thinking about for a while.
My New Subject: Hearth & Home
I spend a very large percentage of my life at home.
I work here.
I write here.
I read here.
I cook here.
I rest here.
I practice my witchcraft here.
This isn't simply the place where I keep my stuff between trips out into the world. My home is the center of my life.
So this season, I want to spend some time studying what makes a home feel good to live in.
Not just organized, although that matters to me. Not just cozy, although you know I'm going to fluff a pillow and light a candle the second the temperature drops below seventy.
I want my home to inspire me.
I want it to welcome the people I love.
I want the things I own to support the life I'm actually living instead of requiring me to constantly organize, clean and manage them.
I want spaces that invite me to read, write, cook, create, gather and rest.
Mostly, I want to pay attention to how my home and I take care of each other.
So that's one of my subjects this semester.
Hearth & Home.
September Feels Like Coming Home
Maybe that's why September has always felt like a beginning to me.
January asks us to charge forward.
September seems to ask us to come back.
Back to routines after the looseness of summer.
Back to kitchens where something warm is simmering on the stove.
Back to books and notebooks and things we want to learn.
Back to evenings spent inside as the light begins disappearing a little earlier.
Back to ourselves.
I don't need January 1 to tell me when I'm allowed to begin again.
I'm choosing September.
I'm entering this personal new year without resolutions or some giant list of things I need to accomplish before my next birthday rolls around.
I want to keep what is working. Release what isn't. Learn a few things. Take care of my home. And pay attention to the life happening inside it.
That feels like enough.
Actually, that feels like a pretty wonderful place to begin.
A Tiny Slow Living Reset Ritual
Sometime this week, make yourself something you enjoy drinking and find a quiet place to sit. Take out a piece of paper or open a fresh page in a notebook.
Write three headings:
Keep
Change
Explore
Under Keep, write down a few things in your life that are already working. These don't need improvement. They don't need optimization. Let them be good.
Under Change, choose one or two things that feel heavier or more complicated than they need to be. Don't solve them yet. Just notice them.
And under Explore, write down the things you've been curious about lately.
Don't worry about whether they're useful.
Don't turn them into goals.
Don't create a twelve-week action plan.
Just notice what keeps tugging at your sleeve.
Then choose one.
Give it thirty minutes sometime this week.
Read something. Watch something. Listen to something. Try something.
Consider it your first day of school. Fresh notebook optional.
A quick note: The book links below are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you purchase through them, at no additional cost to you. I only share books and resources I genuinely recommend.
A Few Resources for Your Own Curriculum
If the idea of creating your own personal curriculum has you curious, here are a few books that have shaped some of my own thinking around slowing down, paying attention, and living more intentionally.
Wintering by Katherine May - A beautiful exploration of the quieter, fallow seasons of our lives and what can happen when we stop trying to rush through them.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer - A book about reciprocity, attention, gratitude, and our relationship with the living world. This one deeply resonates with the way I think about stewardship.
The Book of Delights by Ross Gay - A collection of essays born from the practice of deliberately noticing everyday delight. This one is on my own reading list as I continue exploring what it means to pay closer attention to an ordinary life.
Come Along With Me This September
For the next few weeks, I'll be exploring Hearth & Home through the lens of slow living - resetting our spaces, creating rhythms that make home easier to tend, and thinking about what it means to create a home that actually supports the life happening inside it.
On Fridays, The Signal will follow along with simple spellwork to support the month's theme. Nothing elaborate. Just small bits of everyday magic for tending our homes, shifting the energy within them, and bringing a little more intention to the spaces that hold us.
And because I rarely look at anything through only one lens, we'll also explore the month through tarot, along with the changing astrological season. We'll begin under the thoughtful, discerning energy of Virgo before moving into Libra's invitation toward balance, beauty and harmony.
Slow living. Hearth and home. A little magic. A little tarot.
Different ways of paying attention to the same seasonal shift.
Grab a cup of something warm and settle into a cozy spot. I'm glad you're here with me.
Want a little guidance for the week ahead?
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