Before you go back.

September has a way of making everything feel as if it should begin again. The holidays end. Children go back to school. People return to work. Calendars fill up and the pace returns.

For some people, the summer has been brilliant. For others, it has carried pressure, uncertainty, relationship problems, money worries or decisions about work. For many, it has been a mixture of both. Then Monday arrives and we go back, often before we have thought about what the time away showed us.

In my book, The Alternative Is Unthinkable, I talk about these moments and frame some of the questions we rarely give ourselves time to ask. What did the break make clearer? What are you looking forward to returning to? What are you dreading? What have you been carrying that the holiday did not fix? What have you quietly decided you have no alternative to?

You may return to exactly the same life and realise it still fits. That is an answer too. But before you go back, it is worth looking at it again.