When September Doesn't Feel Like September
Saying goodbye the one season and stepping into the next.
I have a song that I listen to every time I take off or land in a plane. It started last year, just happened to come on during a playlist and it seemed to fit the moment—that particular feeling of being in between two places, of going towards something but also leaving something.
It’s a transition song. One for moments that have equal parts promise of potential and also the bittersweetness of pulling away. Letting one thing go so that you can look forward to something else.
***
I moved at the end of August—a whirlwind move that landed in between two work trips—and as I made the final round of deep cleaning that I’d never do in any other circumstance, I put the song on.
I sat down on the floor in the entirely empty living room, echoey without any furniture or books to soak up the sound. I extended all the way onto my back, the tiny room now feeling surprisingly spacious, and stared up at the popcorn ceiling. I tried to wrap my mind around leaving a place that had defined a decade.
There was nothing particularly special about the manufactured home from the early 90s that we had rented for so long. It certainly wouldn’t make it into any design magazines. But a home isn’t a design object, it’s a living, breathing, constantly evolving thing, sculpted by emotions, conversations, and an infinite number of small, everyday moments. It wasn’t the physical structure or layout that made this place a home, it was the place and the people. The generosity and care offered from the family we rented from. The art on the walls, the conversations with friends at the dinner table. It held the goodness that you can fill a place with over time.
Still staring up at the ceiling, I reached for my phone and pressed repeat on the song. I wanted to sit in the well of nostalgic emotion a little longer. This was the house where I felt like I became an artist. The house where I wrote several books. The house that birthed my relationship with the cold water.
That week of moving, a friend sent a quote from Howard Thurman.
“I discovered that the oak tree and I had a unique relationship. I could sit, my back against its trunk, and feel the same peace that would come to me in my bed at night. I could reach down in the quiet places of my spirit, take out my bruises and my joys, unfold them, and talk about them. I could talk aloud to the oak tree and know that I was understood. It, too, was a part of my reality, like the woods, the night, and the pounding surf, my earliest companions, giving me space.”
At the new house, there’s a birch tree in the yard. In the midst of wading through the unopened boxes, I threw a blanket down on the grass. I lay down and stared up through the branches, the silhouette of leaves against the late August sky.
Time for a new chapter, time to transition into something else.
***
This weekend marks the official transition to fall. Stepping out of one season and into another.
September is one of my favorite months. It’s my birthday month, so that helps, but it’s the general energy of September that I love. The residual feeling of summer, but without that season’s demands and frenzy. September is a little more orderly, asks for a little more quiet but knows you’re not lethargic yet. There’s still a bounce, a spark, an aliveness. The days get shorter, a little cooler, you begin to feel a shift and transition towards a slower time. “Shorts and sweater season” as I like the call it.
An in-between month, a transitional month. The kind of energy I look forward to.
But this September has not gone according to plan.
Instead of a three-week trip packed full of fun work things and fun friend things, I sat on my couch with Covid instead. Sick enough and low energy enough to not feel up for anything, exhausted by the smallest tasks, but well enough to be entirely frustrated by the whole affair.
The wiser, more practical part of myself says, “nothing in life goes according to plan.” The self that wants order in the midst of chaos, the childhood self that wants to get her way, the self that wants to say yes to all the wonderful things and never be limited by reality is simply annoyed.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s not the end of the world. Plans change. Flights can be canceled. New gatherings with friends can be planned. And also: sometimes you just want to whine at the universe and say, “you’ve taken the best month of the year from me.”
In fact it felt like all of the good energy of summer, all the creative ideas and inspiration that I had built up, stored at the back of my mind specifically to play with come September, were sucked out of me in the span of two weeks. And so, September has not felt like September.
We’re all worth so much more than our productivity, we all need rest, we have to take care of our bodies because, as Julie Cloutier said last week, “handmade things are made by bodies.” This I know.
But there can be a gap between what you know and what you feel, and sometimes when you’ve watched one too many episodes of reality real estate shows (“sales is just a transfer of enthusiasm!!”), you feel like maybe you have gone past the point of no return. You’ve squashed any kind of creative potential. You’ve dampened the energy. All you’re left with is rampant time for overthinking and obsessing about all the projects that you’re not working on. You convince yourself you can’t write the book, and that you’ll never want to make art again. Where did all that shorts and sweater energy go?
At some point in the last couple of weeks, I came across this Agnes Martin quote:
“That which seems like a false step is just the next step.”
It turned out to be from a lecture she gave in 1973 at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania
“When we wake up in the morning we are inspired to do some certain thing and we do it. The difficulty lies in the fact that it may turn out well or it may not turn out well. If it turns out well we have a tendency to think that we have successfully followed our inspiration and if it does not turn out well we have a tendency to think that we have lost our inspiration. But that is not true. There is successful work and work that fails but all of it is inspired.”
She continues a little later:
"Say to yourselves. I am going to work in order to see myself and free myself. While working and in the work I must be on the alert to see myself. When I see myself in the work I will know that that is the work I am supposed to do. I will not have much time for other peoples problems. I will have to be by myself almost all the time and it will be a quiet life.”
This morning, I felt a shift. Energy for a morning walk, a craving to sit down and write. I put on my wool sweater, took my tea, and went outside to look at the pink streaks of sunrise. Warm enough to not feel cold, brisk enough to feel awake. A quiet life.
I came back inside, flipped through my summer sketches and notes, reminding myself of all of those ideas that had been percolating. Yes, there is something here. Potential.
I put the song on. Time to let one thing go and move on to another.
Maybe September feels like September after all.
-Anna
2025 POSTCARD CALENDAR PREORDER + PRINT SALE
One thing I did manage to do this past week as I got some energy back was get a bunch of stuff off to the printer, including my 2025 postcard calendar! Preorders are up through the weekend and you get free shipping.
And since I’m trying to make some space in the studio for new fall/holiday things, all of my print prints are on sale through this weekend. All 8x10” prints are $20. Buy them for all your friends and any empty walls.
“…so many of the things that once gave the average person’s life real meaning are now treated with sarcasm and contempt: college is a waste of money, work is a waste of your life, getting married is just a piece of paper, having kids is a nightmare, family is a burden, hobbies are merely quaint, earnestly expressing yourself is cringe, leaving the house is exhausting, religion is for idiots, the list goes on. If you allow yourself to internalize this perspective, eventually everything becomes a dumb joke.” Thank you to Rosie Spinks for pointing me in the direction of this essay by Catherine Shannon.
Kenshō studio did a really beautiful series on friendship this summer, and I was so honored to be a part of it. Take some time with coffee this weekend and dive in. And trust me, when you read this one, you’re going to really want a creative soulmate.
Mason Currey on his Beaudelaire Summer. He’s keeping his daily Worm Zoom writing sessions going this fall and I am excited to start attending again. Highly recommend for anyone who needs some writing accountability.
“And what remains? A shoreline. A canyon, an island. A sculpture, a bell. Something lighter, something beautiful. Like a stone drifting in the sea for eons, smoothed by time and salt and churn. What’s left after all our turnings is, ideally, what matters to us most.” Fog Chaser with a beautiful piece of music inspired by Rialto Beach.
#The100DayProject Newsletter is doing a special 21 Day fall creative project if you need a little kickstart to your creative practice. I’m doing it, but please note that I wrote it down in my notebook as 17 days instead of 21, which I think says everything about where my brain is currently at.
This honest conversation about money between Nic Antoinette and Cody Cook-Parrott.
An excellent essay about democracy and fashion by lyz.
This video about the work of photographer Andre Vieira Passos, who once left his photos in his studio unattended to and they all molded. What could have been a disaster turned into inspiration. Mold became a muse. I think a lot about what it means as an artist to collaborate with nature, and this is such a beautiful example. Thank you to Isabelle McAllister for originally sharing it!
UPCOMING CREATIVE FUEL WORKSHOPS
Thursday September 26, 5-6pm PT: Create+Engage Studio Session
This will be a little more casual than the usual Create+Engage workshops, and we’re hoping that it will encourage you to use this time to come and work on some type of creative action. We’ll have a special guest to kickstart some inspiration, and you can use the time to connect and share, make and write some postcards, draw some political poster designs, etc. Sign up here.
DIVE Writing Group: October - December
The Fall 2024 session of DIVE writing group kicks off next month and there are still a couple of spots left! Gather together with facilitator Kerri Anne and make fall a season of writing. More info + sign up.
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Boy, I feel this part SO DEEPLY: “you feel like maybe you have gone past the point of no return. You’ve squashed any kind of creative potential. You’ve dampened the energy. All you’re left with is rampant time for overthinking and obsessing about all the projects that you’re not working on.”
What is the song you play? I apologize if I missed it in my reading...