September
9/8/25
I love the month of September. It's a month of endings and beginnings. I like the liminal space, the feeling that something hasn’t quite ended, and something hasn’t quite begun. Leaves start to change, the kids go back to school. It’s a time of new pens and the as yet unmet possibilities of crisp fresh pages of notebooks. Beautiful, sunny days, followed by cool nights; sitting outside, under the late summer moon. Still fresh are the memories of sticky, sweaty skin, smelling of clean lake water and sun, blackberry stains still fading on your fingers, rogue grains of sand still found in the bottom of bags. But the days are getting shorter, and if I haven’t yet pulled my sweaters out of storage, I am thinking about them now; about layers and crisp air and cozy nights with soup and firelight. It’s also my birthday month. September is a month that I assess, think about the way I’m living, and ask myself if I’m spending time in ways I want to be spending my time.
Something that I have noticed is that as a general rule, time spent on the internet, time spent staring at screens, any time at all spent in the comments section (even Substack feels as if it is succumbing to the Rage Bait Algorithm), is time that I wish I could get back.
Since I was very young, I have romanticized the past - and I mean that in a “I like gramophones more than CD players” kind of a way. Not the red hat deranged way. I called myself a Luddite way before I had a deeper understanding of the word. I find convenience in and of itself to be suspect. I’d rather listen to a record than a playlist. I’d much rather read a paper book than…do almost anything, but I certainly prefer it to an e-reader or my phone or a computer screen. I don’t think the point of life is to optimize. I don’t want to optimize my body, my house, my writing methods, my life. I just want to actually live my life. I want to inhabit my body. I want to feel what it is to be here, right now.
So, I came up with a list of things I’d like to prioritize, things I’d like to do more of in my day to day life:
Write people letters and postcards and send them through snail mail
Spend time in libraries
Look away from myself, and turn towards others - the cult of self improvement is killing connectivity, it’s a distraction, it’s just one more way of avoiding living fully
Join one in person community organization
Read more long form pieces (essays, research, etc)
Write more long form pieces, by hand, on paper
Walk more
Get my bicycle tuned up, and start biking again
Go see/listen to more live music
Eat outside when the weather permits, leave my phone inside
Download whatever app will put actual limits on how much time I look at screens
Consider for the 100th time how to actually get rid of my smartphone
Carve out time where I do nothing. Really nothing
Create a zine
Continue to take film photos, learn about types of cameras, potentially invest in a large format film camera
Start meditating regularly again
Move my body daily
Dance
Read more poetry
Collect poetry books
Go to farmer’s markets whenever possible, learn about foods I’m unfamiliar with, cook new dishes with friends
Questions to ask myself regularly:
What do you love? Who do you love? Are you cultivating those things and those relationships?
What is pleasurable to you? Identify it, then schedule it like you schedule meetings, until it’s habit, until it’s part of you
Notice light, scent, textures, sounds and music that make you feel good - surround yourself with more of those things (thank you Sarah Faith Gottesdiener for this)
Are you letting your brain breathe? Just let yourself be. Be bored. Be unstimulated
Are you trying to “optimize”? Stop it - do one thing at a time
I started taking these notes about September, sitting on the floor of my grandfather’s hospital room (it was a clean, or at least clean-seeming floor) last weekend, when it was still August. When it still felt like summer. He died on Monday, at dawn, as the sun started to lighten the sky. I started to write about him, about death, about being in the room with him, before and after he left, about how strange grief is. And I will continue to write about it, and probably share it. But not yet.
Things I’ve loved recently:
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck
Fun history of why Subarus are so gay (lesbian, to be more specific):
The Stranger Song I love this song, but I’d never really listened to the words truly, until they were sung by a woman
This soap: KAPHAR Cleansing Body Bar, but I love everything I have tried from this company
Substack Essays, etc:
📌 45 Acts of Non-Compliance for Ordinary People: “So today, I want to offer a stepping stone. Collectively, we’ve become very good at saying, ‘I don’t like this, I don’t approve.’ But today I want to explore how we move into ‘I won’t do this. I will not participate and I withdraw my resources.’”
Why is Wellnes So Fucking Annoying?: “I’m watching in horror as TikTok influencers get paid to promote products that don’t work, and as graphic design becomes the base of merit in the supplement industry.” I have been meaning to write something similar to this. It’s out of control, guys. I love herbs. I work for a supplement company. As someone who has a view from inside, stop it. Don’t buy the thing that is being so perfectly marketed to you.
Holly Whitaker’s Substack: Recovering - if you or anyone in your life is battling addiction, her perspectives are so balanced, nuanced, and welcome.
Labubu Lobotomy: “But a constantly distracted populace is one made useless, our psyches too weak to sustain anything—a revolution, the building of a better culture and community, even a conversation. We have become addicted to Labubu lobotomies for good reason, but we must kill the Labubu in our heads if we want to have any hope of getting back to a generative life.”
The Smartest People I Know Are Obsessed With a Skill Many Were Told Is Useless - I find this title annoying, but the essay is great - lays out clearly why outsourcing our memory to google/AI is a, well, bad idea.
You Were Lied to About Exercise - A perspective I’ve never heard before
Our Last Conversation Was A Song - Also just read anything that Andrea Gibson’s widow, Megan Falley, writes. I always end up crying in that bittersweet grateful for life and death and poetry way.
A poem: all my friends and i talk about is getting rid of our phones
Follow-Up: Ethical Porn Recommendations - I don’t watch porn these days, but if it’s your thing, put your money where your…ethics are. Also, a four chambered heart is a beautiful site
I love you all. The world feels scary and broken, and also beautiful and filled with promise. I am continually looking for ways to build the world that we want to live in. If you are in this boat, I’d love to hear what sort of things you’re imagining and doing as we navigate these storms.