Why is September traditionally first day of school? What does that mean?

Why is September so important, especially for restarting a new education year? Let’s explore a few reasons why. I have to be honest in that I haven’t written a blog post for quite some time, but I want to use this as a personal entry and a bit of an introspection into my current life and how I would want to refocus.

Time flies on so many levels. I’ve been settling into a new country (for me) and been here for 18 months. I decided to take it slow to settle in a place, and it’s fair to say I have settled, and it’s time to refocus my energy.

In 2 days from me writing this blog post, it’s September 2024.

Photo by GraceHues Photography on Unsplash

1. September was the traditional first day of school.

For someone out of school for some time — and this year is particularly memorable for me because it’s actually been a DECADE. Going into two-digits since my Bachelor graduation is quite phenomenal.

As children growing up, we’ve been gearing up to get back into the learning mode in September.

Fun fact: On a side note I was looking into, why September? Because in the agricultural era traditionally parents needed the children to help work on the farms more in the summer (where there were longer days, and busiest time as a traditional farmer (read here for more rabbit hole information)), thus the reason for children to return to school is optimal in September.

As modern era children — September marks the end of a long summer holiday where you could have lots of fun, no school, beaches, play time. September means that it’s time for us to start working and learning again.

I thought a bit of regret when I think about it — a lot of times I have that “new year” post, you know… “New Year, New Goals”. But instead, at this time I feel that I would rather be in tune with my traditional learning schedule. The reason being, for me, winter was tough for me to start things and start being disciplined, the short days also give a bit of a depressive mode to be honest (plus it was my first proper winter that we had regularly under 10 degrees with 3pm sunsets). This time I want to really strive for that discipline, and give myself a boost.

When people say you need 21 days to build a habit, I’ve tried that before, it didn’t work for me in the past. 100 days to changea lifestyle, sounds more appropiate because we aren’t using our short term adrenaline to power through the 21 days. Let’s do that. 100 days. (There’s 120+ days until the year of 2024 😉)

Time to refocus. As if it’s your first day of school, and it makes perfect sense because:

• Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.
• Athletics is not merely the training of the body, but the pursuit of excellence and discipline.
• Life is not about reaching a destination, but about the journey of continuous growth and self-improvement.

2. Refocus on new goals and a new lifestyle.

What does that look like, you’d say?

1. Set up a challenge for yourself. Make a plan, write things down. Remembering the concept of “wabi-sabi” the Japanese phrase about the beauty of imperfection — the point is to be NOT perfect because life never is, the point is to get started.
2. Refocus your attention. The most expensive thing in the word unlike most say — it’s not TIME, it’s your ATTENTION. What you choose to focus your energy on, that’s what you get out of it. The reason why true serial entrepreneurs are not doom-scrollers is because they invested their time to do other things.
3. Build iron habits. Everyone should just have something they are comfortable enough with to start, and to end. We aren’t making short term 1-day challenges, we are in for the longhaul. It’s the same for exercise, it’s not about that 1 set a day you get, it’s about the 1 set a day PLUS consistency.

My upgrade will include:

1. Wake up before 8am

2. Do your morning routine, an hour with no distraction.

3. Exercise 1h a day

4. Read 10 pages a day

5. Dedicate 1 hour to your new skill (if you can do an hour on social media, you could do anything, right?)

6. Follow a healthy diet

The biggest regret for many people in their old age is Worry. (sounds familar…)

“Life is so short. What you will regret is weeks or months of the kind of mindless, self-destructive ruminating worrying that people do. You’re going to wish you had that time back.”

3. Let’s not let “Later” become “too late”.

All those moments in a day you’ll say “later”:

• Talk to you later.
• I’ll call/text you later.
• See you later.
• We’ll walk later.
• I’ll tell you later.

We always tend to leave everything for later, but “later” doesn’t belong to us. At some point, later, our loved ones might not be with us. Later, we don’t hear them, see them. Later, those would have been memories. Later, the day becomes night, life becomes death. Let’s not let that fly by without some “now”.

Now is the time to start, September is arriving and this is your sign.