October 1st and the Art of Loving Things Without Apology

Every year, on October 1st, the decorations go up in my house. Not when the weather finally cooperates or gradually over time. On the first day of the month, without exception, the pumpkins and the spooky cats and the string lights all come out at once, and my house transforms into exactly what I want it to be for the next thirty-one days.

People sometimes ask why so early. The honest answer is that I have been waiting for this since September. Maybe since last November, if I’m being fully truthful. And when the day finally arrives, the feeling isn’t polite enthusiasm. It is pure, unfiltered excitement, the kind most of us are taught to tone down somewhere around middle school.

I never toned mine down. I love Halloween the way I loved it as a kid. I trick-or-treated well into high school, long after most of my peers had decided it wasn’t cool anymore. Honestly, if it were still socially acceptable, I would be out there right now with a pillowcase, no shame at all.

Loving Things Has Always Been Who I Am

This isn’t really a Halloween story. It’s a bigger pattern. I have always loved things fully. Not cautiously, not with a raised eyebrow ready in case someone questions my enthusiasm, but completely. Every season is my favorite season, and I mean that every single time I say it. I fall in love with books and TV shows and hobbies the way other people fall in love with people. All in, no reservations.

That kind of enthusiasm isn’t always rewarded. We live in a culture that often prizes detachment. Coolness gets equated with indifference. Loving something too visibly can make you an easy target, and there’s a particular flavor of humor built entirely around mocking the things other people love.

There’s a name for that: yum yucking. Someone shares something they genuinely love, and someone else swoops in to declare it overrated, embarrassing, or cringe. It happens constantly, in fandom spaces and hobby spaces and everywhere people dare to be openly enthusiastic about something.

The Sadness of Watching People Like to Hate Things

I’ll be honest. It makes me sad sometimes. I like to like things. I always have. And I notice, more than I wish I did, how many people seem to prefer the opposite. How much easier it can feel to tear something down than to admit you genuinely enjoy it. How performing disdain has somehow become safer than performing joy.

I understand the impulse. Loving something openly means being visible. It means someone might decide your joy is silly or excessive or a little too much. Cynicism protects you from that risk. Enthusiasm doesn’t.

But I have made my choice, and I made it a long time ago. I would rather be the person decorating for Halloween on October 1st, fully and visibly delighted, than the person standing at a safe emotional distance from everything, protecting myself from ever looking foolish.

I Won’t Dim My Light for Anyone

That has become something of a personal motto for me. I won’t dim my light for anyone. Not for the people who think Halloween decorations shouldn’t go up until closer to the actual holiday. Not for anyone who thinks a grown woman shouldn’t still want to trick or treat. Not for the yum yuckers, wherever they show up.

This applies well beyond Halloween. It applies to how I run my business, how I write, how I show up in every corner of my life. Loving things fully, unapologetically, without waiting for permission, is not a character flaw. It is one of the truest things about me, and I have decided it is worth protecting.

The world will always have people who like to hate things. It will never run short of that particular brand of coolness. But it needs people who like to like things too. People willing to be delighted out loud. People who decorate on the first of the month because waiting one single day longer feels unbearable.

Decorate Early. Love Loudly.

This October, my house is fully transformed, right on schedule, exactly the way it has been for years. And I would encourage you to find your own version of that. The thing you love without irony. The enthusiasm you’ve maybe learned to tuck away because someone, somewhere, made you feel like too much for loving it.

Bring it back out. Put it on full display. Whatever your October 1st is, whatever thing makes you unreasonably, unapologetically happy, let it be loud.

The world has enough people who like to hate things. Be the one who likes to like them.

If your brand story could use a little more of that unapologetic joy, let’s talk. I’d love to help you tell it loudly, and in your own true voice.