Before the Pace Picks Up

You can feel it coming. The tilt of the light in the evening. The calendar filling back in. The sense that the long loose days of summer are closing and something is about to start asking more of you.

September does that. It arrives with an unspoken instruction. Back to it. Back to full. Back to the pace you were keeping before. As if summer was the pause and now the real thing resumes. As if there is a speed you are supposed to return to and a deadline for returning to it.

There is not.

The return is yours. The pace of it is yours. Nobody handed you a schedule for how fast you are supposed to be back at full capacity, and if it feels like someone did, look closely at who. It was probably you.

You do not have to come back all at once. You do not have to match the version of you from last September, or the version everyone else appears to be performing this week. You can come back slowly. You can come back in pieces. You can come back at the exact speed that keeps you in one piece.

The season is turning whether you are ready or not. That part is not up to you. What is up to you is the speed you meet it at, and how much grace you extend to yourself while you do.

Take the week. The pace will still be there when you decide to pick it up. Come back on your own terms, or do not call it coming back at all.

Come find us at thereturningproject.com
Inward. Onward. Go.