May 24, 2025 - seals and fog and greenhouses
I had every intention to continue April’s writing routine and clock in for an hour every day to make progress on my book, but that was short lived when May 1st rolled into May 2nd and I hadn’t made an attempt to write. Tomorrow, I said. And that continued for the rest of the month because I wanted space from my story.
Sometimes I get too close and too stuck in my perspective to make any valuable progress. I could have sat at my desk at 8pm every night and stared at blank paper or read over my old notes and looked at the clock every three minutes. But that is neither progress for my book nor progress for my life.
I often need to consume life in order to create life. When I am mentally stagnate it usually comes from an acute boredom, when my desire to retreat morphs into a desire to connect. Once I realized what my lack of writing was telling me, I allowed myself to take a step back and released the guilt of putting my notes away.
The month of May consisted of more fog than sun, which is typical for the east coast, and means we have to make plans independent of the weather. The ocean looks nicer when it’s gloomy anyway. I took a trip with my marine biology girls and we stayed at a house on the ocean that overlooked the foggy horizon. Every morning we woke up to a misty cloud rolling along the coast. But it was lush with new leaves, and there’s something satisfying about living amongst the weather instead of hiding from it.
Had we not left the house we would have never seen the seals. The South Shore is scattered with beaches and when you find the right beach you are gifted with the presence of seals. We climbed the rocks and watched a group of five or six pop their heads above the water. I think they wanted to get our attention as much as we wanted to get theirs.
We stayed indoors when the fog turned into rain. For an afternoon we picked our creative endeavour - painting, reading, photography, and writing. I added pictures to my website, found my favourites of the seals, and started to plot out this blog post. The sun made an appearance on the last evening so we took advantage of the low tide and explored the seaweed and barnacles. I’ve always loved the intertidal zone, when the ocean pulls back and reveals all that is hidden during high tide.
When I wasn’t escaping to the South Shore, I was escaping to a greenhouse. Many evenings were spent inside the radiant retreat, where Lana sings from a speaker and the twinkling lights blur the outside world. One cannot enter the greenhouse without a glass of wine in hand. Bonus points if it’s a bottle. The greenhouse is a meeting point for its members where we share honest conversation and jewelry, and the night either ends in lemon cheesecake or leftover pizza. I always leave feeling full of the connection that the greenhouse facilitates.
I could say May was an uneventful month for my writing, but living at my desk leads to an uneventful life to write about. I’ll start to wind down again as the month comes to a close and the days transition into June. I anticipate more time at the beach and late nights spent writing, giving my story the space to flow.
