There’s a particular kind of quiet that hits the neighborhood the week after Labor Day. Backpacks by the door, lunches back in rotation, and suddenly the whole city seems to exhale into routine.
I feel it every year. That itch to treat September like a second January. A chance to look at the last few months honestly, take what worked, and leave the rest behind.
So that’s what I’m doing this week. Taking stock of my summer before I let it go.
This Summer
If I’m being real with you: it was too much. Beautiful, but too much.
🛬 I went to Italy with my boyfriend. Harrison Hot Springs with my kids. Glamping in Washington. Cortez Island for a writers’ retreat. A girls’ trip to Osoyoos. Calgary to visit family and friends. And tomorrow, I’m off to the UK with my dad.
Every single one of those trips gave me something: new ideas, quality time with the people I love, and the kind of creative spark you only get from a writers’ retreat on an island with no cell signal. I don’t regret a single one.
But somewhere between the packing, the repacking, and the days home in Vancouver that were so slammed with clients and networking that I barely unpacked before I was packing again, I lost the thread a little. I missed my own house, the little house on the hill 🏡
🌹 I put in new landscaping this year that I still haven’t really sat with. I haven’t had a coffee on the patio and just looked at it the way I imagined I would when I was planning it out.
That’s the trade-off nobody puts on the highlight reel: you can have an extraordinary summer and still feel like you were never quite anywhere.
What was your summer like? Were you home more than you wanted, or gone more than you meant to be? I’d love to hear where you landed.
Start. Stop. Keep.
This is the framework I want to come back to this fall. Not resolutions, just an honest inventory.
✅ Start: I’m launching a new video campaign project this fall, and my daughter is coming on board to help build it. This is the part of the reset I’m most excited about. Not just the project itself, but doing it with her. It’s the antidote to a summer where quality time got squeezed into gaps between flights.
✅ Stop: Leaving town so much. I said yes to every trip this summer because each one was genuinely worth it on its own, but I never stepped back to look at the calendar as a whole. This fall, the little house on the hill gets to actually see me in it.
✅ Keep: My workout routine stays exactly as intense as it’s been. That one wasn’t broken. Some things don’t need resetting. They need protecting.
Over to you
September has a way of asking a question that summer never does: not “did you have fun?” but “how do you want to show up now?”
So, how do you want to show up differently this fall? What’s your start, your stop, and your keep?
Let me know by sending a message to coaching@annagradie.com I read every one.
Here’s to a grounded September.
Lots of love,
-Anna
