transitioning seasons: thoughts on september's shift
reflections from the shift season, changes and feelings about being 20s
This morning, I woke up by the fresh and crisp air of an incoming autumn, and as I sipped my coffee, I began to reflect. My thoughts started to wander, and my mind drifted to how much this time of year influences us.
September has been here for a few days now, bringing its first rains, bidding farewell to the summer heat that suffocated us for months, and welcoming the coolness of autumn.
For me, September is the true beginning of the year. It's the month when everything returns to its natural rhythm. We all come back from our summer vacations, after having been stuck for three months in a time bubble that only summer allows us to experience. A bubble where anything can happen, where we can truly be ourselves, free from schoolbooks, work, and all those social constraints we live with for the rest of the year.
If it weren't for the suffocating heat, I would enjoy summer much more, but I think we all feel that way.
But when September arrives, I can already feel the air of change and readjustment.
It is quite an emotionally turbulent month for me. Last year, I struggled a lot to get back into my routine. As a university student studying in a city far from home, I often return to my university town with a bit of fear. Fear of what I might find in front of me.
Last year, I experienced a solitude I had never felt before. A different kind of solitude from that of adolescence, when we try to understand who we are and what our path is (spoiler: I still don't know).
A solitude characterized by being completely engulfed in a social void. I felt alone and unheard. I spent my September afternoons in the park when it was still warm enough to stay outside until the evening, sitting on the grass. I had no friends nearby who could help me, or chat with me. I was talking to my own thoughts, which, at the same time, were the ones making me feel inadequate and alone, excluded from the world and all those social contexts I observed around me.
Making friends, especially as an adult, isn't as easy as it seems. I was convinced that once I finished high school and arrived at university, I would meet new people who would stay in my life for years, but time passes, and people take different paths, most often forgetting about us. In recent months, I have luckily met a couple of wonderful people in my university town who have somehow "saved" me from the grip of loneliness, but before that, I was alone. Sometimes, it's right to live through such periods, because it's in these moments that we reflect on ourselves, who we are, and what we want or don't want. These are the moments that make us stronger. We fall, only to rise again, stronger.
Last year, at this exact time, I was quite lost, and it was the words of
(@americanbaron) that helped me, comforted me, and made me feel less alone. We all go through it. We all experience the same situation at least once in our lives. Some more intensely, and some less so. (I’m leaving below a reel that I think perfectly represents one of those 20s crises that characterizes most of us, even if many don’t know it yet or don’t give it too much weight.)We all go through that period when solitude becomes easy, a cheap solution to our problems. Just as Ryan says, ‘it happens when we are not surrounded by anyone, or by just everyone.’
After last September, I learned not to focus on the lack of people around me who could listen to me, but instead on the few who are there, ready to lend a hand, to provide mutual support.
September is solitude. It is also change. It is also confusion. It is all these things together because we return from the summer bubble and often feel disoriented, no longer accustomed to the routine we had before. Every September is always a new beginning, and I believe every new beginning is different from the others.
For me, this September is different from last year. I find myself in a phase of real shift. I graduated in July, and in a few weeks, I will start my master's degree. This represents one of those total beginnings that come after the end of something. A new chapter, if we want to call it that. One of those chapters in life that build our story.
And the same goes for autumn. Most people perceive it as the 'dying phase' of the seasonal cycle—the phase when everything withers to make room for the bareness of winter. But for me, it's not like that.
Autumn represents change in the truest sense of the word. When the trees change their leaves, the animals prepare for winter hibernation, and the transition from warmth to the freezing cold of December. Everything that characterizes autumn is special to me. And I think it's brilliant that September starts right in this period of the year—mother nature had it all planned out ;)
It’s a time of new opportunities that we just need to know how to seize.
So: welcome, September! I really hope that this new, fresh change gives me a push forward toward what I’m gradually pursuing and toward the person I want to become.
With Love.
—Michela.
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