The Season After More
A seasonal invitation to gather, listen, and decide what to carry forward.
September often arrives with the feeling of a beginning. There is something about it that always makes me want to pause, to head to the nearest supply store and enter into the ‘back to school’ energy of our childhoods. To gather a fresh notepad and any organizational supplies and take inventory. To organize, plan, and decide with this new energy. But by the time we reach this part of the month, something else begins to emerge. We are no longer standing at the beginning of the season, we are living inside of it, and perhaps that’s when different questions begin to form.
Summer is an endless celebration of warmth, being more social, the ebbs and flows of pace, being more indulgent in the simplest of things, and enjoying nature and the juicy fruits this season has to offer. Where routines can be stretched and remolded, and sometimes feel almost optional, where the weather may dictate your calendar more than your to-do list. Although I was born in the fall, and I love this season, summer is where I truly come alive with all that it has to offer. There have been summers where I have wanted to experience more and others where I’ve been grateful to have taken July and August off to slow down and just be.
In the summer, it is as if there is an abundance of time, space, energy. And with all of summer's abundance comes a natural shift in the fall. The days begin to shorten, the evenings draw in, the energy that was once so outward and expansive begins to turn inward in preparation for the winter. Fall also has a bountiful energy, but the invitation feels different. Summer asks for expansiveness while fall asks for discernment.
Less: What else can I experience?
More: What is worth carrying forward?
What has grown?
What do I want to gather?
What is ready to be brought in?
What has served its purpose?
And what no longer needs to come with me into the next season?
Maybe that’s what I love about this time of year. Not that we suddenly need to become more disciplined or productive, but that the season itself reminds us that life has rhythms. There are seasons for expansion. And seasons for gathering. Seasons for wandering and wondering. And seasons for deciding what is worth keeping.
There is a true luxury to Fall: you have enough distance from summer to see clearly, you have enough evidence to make decisions, and you don’t need to rush.
But Fall can come with a particular kind of pressure
Maybe you feel it in the sudden urge to get back into your routines, to have everything in order, to finally tackle what you put off over the summer
To hit the goals you set in January
To finish the year strong
To somehow get ahead of next year before this year has even ended
All while carrying the weight of what has accumulated over the last nine months: your own decisions, responsibilities, what has come to completion and what is left unfinished, perhaps even the energy and exhaustion of the people around you and the responsibility to keep it all moving forward
Then there is the noise of the “final lock in” and one last push circulating everywhere you look
And suddenly the season that could offer you clarity becomes another season where you are asking yourself to perform.
I don’t believe Fall is asking us to lock in. I believe it is asking us to take notice.
Maybe it isn’t obvious at first…
The tightness in your neck and shoulders, as if you’re bracing yourself for something
The constant switching between messages, meetings, tabs, decisions — your attention being pulled in every direction
The weight you feel after a team meeting, when you’ve absorbed everyone else’s energy and are already thinking about how to motivate them through the next thing
The mental exhaustion that comes with being so good at seeing around corners, anticipating reactions, thinking through the ripple effects, having contingency plans in place, always being many steps ahead, even when nothing is actually wrong
Then, when the day is technically over, something in you is still on
And that tired-but-wired feeling follows you to bed
Even time with the people you love becomes a tug-of-war between being present and solving the next problem in your head
And although you’re genuinely excited to return to the grounding rhythm of your routines, suddenly even those routines feel like something you need to perfect.
You’ve become very good at holding more: more responsibility, expectations, people, decisions. And so capable at making things work that your capacity can quietly become an obligation.
If I can do it, I feel like I should
If I said I would, I feel like I have to
If there’s a way to make it work, I’ll find it
And somewhere along the way, perhaps you stopped asking whether you actually want something and started asking how to make it work.
Maybe this is part of what makes Fall so complex.
Fall can bring a real desire for order, rhythm, depth, and a fresh start. And that is the beauty of this season, but even the things that genuinely support us can become another source of pressure when we turn them into something we have to perfect.
So perhaps this desire to pause, organize, and to take stock doesn’t have to become another demand on ourselves. Perhaps it can actually be an invitation. An invitation to notice, to recognize, to make room for what is true now rather than what was true then or what noise is surrounding us.
Fall gives us permission to take inventory
September has always felt more like a beginning to me than January. As the pace of summer shifts, our calendars begin to take shape again, bringing a yearning for routines, organization, and revisiting or reconnecting with your priorities and goals. Our focus comes into view, and we become more intentional with our time and energy. You can feel your attention return inward as you begin to prepare for what comes next. I find myself wanting to look around at what I’ve created, what I’ve been carrying, what is working, and what no longer quite fits personally and professionally.
This is where fall is no longer the end of the year; it is a threshold. You’re not closing something down; you are choosing what the next chapter will be built from.
You’re asking yourself:
What has grown?
What has served its purpose?
What is complete?
What is still true?
What deserves my energy now?
What is worth carrying forward?
And this is where discernment comes in.
Discernment as a practice
Discernment is an active practice. It asks you to slow down, take notice, and separate what is true now from what no longer is. It isn’t a one-time decision, but rather a continual dance. We practice it in the small moments when something feels different, when an old expectation no longer fits, when the friction is telling us something, and when something feels grounded, easeful, energizing, or expansive. When we pause long enough to ask: is this still right for me, in this season?
Every moment provides us with information: whether we did or didn’t listen, we learn something about how it feels to move with ourselves, and how it feels when we move against what we already know or what our bodies already know. That becomes evidence we can carry into the next decision.
And perhaps by this point in the note, your mind might be circling with, “But I said I would…, so I should.”
Maybe you set a goal, commitment, or focus for yourself at the beginning or another point throughout the year, but now, in this season, it feels like a burden to carry.
A goal, intention, or desire can still be true without being right for this season.
I experienced this myself this summer when plans I’d been looking forward to for months began to feel different in my body. The goal hadn’t changed, but the season had. I had to decide whether I could trust that difference. I’ll tell you more about that experience in a future Note.
What we choose now creates conditions for what emerges later
Fall gives us the space to enter winter differently. If we take the time to notice, discern, and choose now, we don’t have to turn December into another productivity sprint to the finish line while simultaneously trying to enjoy the season.
December gets to be December
A time to celebrate, rest, indulge, be social, and enjoy what you’ve built and the year you’ve had.
And then January gets to be January.
Instead of arriving in the new year with uncertainty and more pressure to have it all figured out, you arrive with having already been listening. You have a clearer sense of what is true, what you want to carry forward, and what you’re ready to leave behind.
Fall is where we make space
Winter is where we listen.
What we choose now creates the conditions for what emerges later.
This Fall, we’ll move through:
Notice → Discern → Prune → Choose → Carry Forward
We will return to this movement throughout the season, as a way of looking rather than a framework.
You don’t have to know exactly what comes next for you. You can simply begin by getting clearer about what is true now. Sometimes that is more than enough to change how you enter your next season.
A little soundtrack for this season 🍂
My September Leaves playlist — for taking inventory, wandering, reflecting, or simply letting the season in.
Private Advisory
Sometimes discernment brings you to a decision
And sometimes you need perspective that helps you hear what you already know.
Sometimes what needs to change isn’t the decision itself, but the way you’re living inside everything you’ve already chosen: your pace, your energy, your routines, what you’re available for, and what actually supports you now.
That is some of the work I do privately.
