September is Coming: What I'm Trying Not to Lose

I've had a good few weeks. Slow mornings. No alarm fighting me awake. Time with my family that wasn't squeezed into the edges of a working day but sat right in the middle of it. And now, as August tips toward September, I can feel the familiar pull starting again. The pull back into routine, into responsibility, into being needed by everyone else before I've had a chance to ask myself what I need.

I want to be honest about that pull, because I think a lot of us in this sector feel it and don't say it out loud.

The Comfort and the Trepidation, Both at Once

There's something in me that's genuinely looking forward to September. I like structure. I like walking into my setting and knowing what the day holds. There's a comfort in routine that summer, for all its softness, doesn't give you.

But there's trepidation too, and I don't think it's dramatic to name it. It's the quiet worry about what will land on my desk in week one. A family going through something hard. A member of staff who's struggling and hasn't said so yet. Something in the setting throwing up a problem nobody planned for. None of these things are catastrophes on their own, but they arrive all at once, and they arrive fast, and somewhere in the scramble to hold it all, I usually stop holding myself.

Two Different Kinds of Full

Summer has had its own kind of full. Full days with my family, full conversations with no clock running underneath them, full attention given to one thing at a time because there was nothing else pulling at me. It's been a good kind of tired. The kind you sleep well after.

Term time full is a different shape entirely. It's the kind that creeps up gradually, where saying yes to everyone else becomes the default and saying yes to yourself becomes the thing that quietly stops happening. I don't think that's unique to me, or to this sector. I think most people who lead a team, or a household, or both, know exactly what I mean.

What's struck me this summer is how much of my own agenda I've actually followed. Not big or selfish things. Just deciding what the day looked like, on my own terms, without checking that against what everyone else needed first. It's a small shift, but it's changed how I feel by the end of most days.

What I'm Choosing to Carry Back

I don't think the answer is to somehow protect September from being September. The team needs me, the children need consistency, and I wouldn't want it any other way. But I don't think the two things, being fully present for everyone else and still having something for myself, have to be as opposed as I've often made them.

So this year I'm trying something different. Before the term takes over the shape of my days entirely, I want to hold onto a bit of what the summer gave me. A slower first response instead of an immediate one. A pause before I decide something has to be fixed by me, right now, alone. Permission to notice how I'm feeling before I move straight into what needs doing.

It sounds small written down. But I suspect the moments that undo us in September aren't usually the big ones. They're the accumulation of a hundred small moments where we didn't stop long enough to check in with ourselves before reacting.

Bringing Both Versions of Myself Into the Room

I don't want the version of me that shows up in September to feel like a completely different person from the one who's had this summer. I'd like her to still be somewhere in the room. A little slower to take everything on as hers to solve alone. A little kinder to herself first, so there's something left over to be kind with when everyone else needs her too.

So here's the question I'm sitting with as the new term approaches, and maybe you are too: what would it look like to bring a bit of your summer self back to work with you this year?