Hi Visionary,

September does not announce itself in North Texas. The sun is still blinding at four in the afternoon; the sky has not changed color since July; and the grass crunches like a bed of cornflakes underfoot due to watering restrictions during our triple-digit stretches.

What changed is smaller than the weather. Buses running the neighborhood by seven and Labor Day sitting on Monday. Pumpkin displays already out, in this heat, which is its own kind of joke.

That is all it takes. The year shifts gears without asking, and from here it runs through Halloween, November, and the holidays into one long stretch where nobody gets an uninterrupted week until January.

Every year, September sneaks up on me. Tell me you feel that too.

Which brings me to what August was missing.

Four letters last month, all of them about getting your time back. We gave your energy a ledger and found the meetings that cost triple what the calendar showed. We named the year you stayed somewhere you already knew was wrong. We looked at the access nobody ever put on your calendar and you never agreed to out loud. And we separated the work that ends the day it ships from the work that keeps paying you.

Every one of those letters told you what to take out.

Not one of them told you what to put in.