I have always thought September feels more like the beginning of a year than January does.
Think about January for a moment. It arrives in the middle of winter, when the trees are bare, the days are short, and everything outside seems to be sleeping. Yet somehow, we have decided this is the moment when we should become entirely new people. New habits. New resolutions. New routines. New versions of ourselves.
September feels very different to me. Maybe part of that goes back to school, when September meant new notebooks, new clothes, new teachers, and the unmistakable feeling that something was beginning. But even now, long after those school years are behind me, I still feel it.
September changes the rhythm. In Chicago real estate, it quite literally begins another season. We have a spring market, which starts toward the end of January and carries through May, and then we have the fall market, beginning just after Labor Day and running roughly through Thanksgiving. It is a shorter market, but in many ways a more purposeful one. Buyers entering the market in September often have a reason to move. They may be relocating. They may want to be settled before the holidays. Sellers who list rather than waiting until the following spring may have their own reasons for wanting to make something happen now.
There is an unmistakable readiness to fall. I feel the same thing in my own home. September is when I start changing things almost without thinking about it. The lighter cotton throws begin disappearing and the wool ones come back out. Bedding changes. The house starts to feel a little warmer and more layered. Before long, the crock pot reappears and suddenly I am thinking about chili and stew instead of the nicoise salads we were eating on a hot July night.
As the temperature changes, somehow, we change along with it. This is what I find so interesting about fall. It is a season of transition, but it is not asking us to erase anything. Summer happened. We enjoyed it. We traveled, ate outside, opened the windows, lived a little differently. September does not tell us any of that was wrong. It simply says: now get ready for what comes next.
Nature seems to understand this better than we do. Fall is a period of gathering and harvesting before dormancy. Things are winding down, but at the same time there is tremendous activity in that preparation. Leaves change to beautiful colors. Food is harvested. Animals prepare. The world begins rearranging itself for the colder months ahead.
This is why September feels like such an interesting beginning to me. It carries momentum, but also reflection. In real estate, people become more serious about what they want to accomplish before the year winds down. At home, we begin preparing for the months when we will spend more time inside. And personally, there is an opportunity to look at where the year has brought us and decide how we want to live through what remains of it.
January tends to ask, “Who are you going to become? “September asks a better question. “What do you need now?” I like this question because it doesn’t reject the life you already have. It asks you to work with it. To adjust it. To warm it up. To make it ready--- with the promise that Spring is not that far off and growth is working its way back to the top of the soil.
Happily Ever Always™.
