A Summer of Ink and Olive Oil

Notes from a tired summer, where art simmers slowly.

It’s June, and I’m romanticizing everything.

Or, at least trying to.

The bruise on a peach. The first sentence that finally lands after three pages of trying. Lately, even that feels like a small miracle.

This is the season for both: golden tomatoes and writer’s block. Linen dresses in pretty patterns and metaphors that don’t quite land on the page or off. The desk sits mostly quiet (especially when I don’t sit down at it). The stovetop does most of the talking.

It’s a summer where creativity sometimes hides in the fridge, clings to the cutting board, waits patiently between the lines of a grocery list.

A little soft.

A little overripe.

A little bit magic, if you don’t look at it too directly.

This is for those of us feeling a little emptied out. The ones who keep showing up anyway with butter on our fingers and a sentence half-formed in our mouths. Who write recipes like short stories and short stories turn into pieces about hunger that stir up other things like grocery lists, because that’s all we have energy for right now.

This is for the ones whose creativity has slowed to a simmer. For the ones who need to believe that tending a pot is also tending a life. To remember that resting is part of writing. That stirring can be its own kind of sentence.

Some days, you write.

Some days, you cook.

Some days, you sit on the floor with a book and a fresh bowl of strawberries that stain your fingers and let the silence be the most important thing you make.

Burnout doesn’t mean the well is dry. It just means you’re tired. And you deserve to rest without guilt. You deserve quiet mornings, soft fruit, and the kind of nourishment that asks nothing in return.

There is no perfect rhythm to the creative life. No flawless routine. Just appetite, intuition, and the willingness to keep tending to the page, to the meal, or to yourself.

So write, if you can.

Feed yourself, always.

And if nothing good happens today, make a sandwich and call it art.

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If this season has felt heavy, slow, or uninspired—you're not alone. Luckily, it won’t always. Creativity isn't a machine. It's a living thing, and it needs time to rest and ripen just like everything else.

Hopefully it will into something more wonderful and delightful than anything you could imagine right now.

Thank you for being here, whether you’re writing, reading, cooking, or simply trying to keep going.

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