Writer’s Notes,
01/05/26
“To create is to love.”
The first day of May is a national holiday here in Greece called Protomagia—the celebration of spring. It’s a day when family and friends gather to the outdoors for picnics and hand-twisted wreaths of wildflowers hung on doorways and balconies as a joyful tribute to nature’s renewal. Unfortunately, this year, the weather had other plans.
I was woken by the sound of the birds chirping a little more than usual. Maybe it’s because the rain brings so kind of joy or because the morning is much quieter today—most people are tucked indoors, cosying up with their loved ones. I can’t say that I mind it. There is quiet solace in a day that asks little of you, where the weather somehow sides with you so that you can do the soulful things that fill your cup.
The day calls for firstly doing just this—creating. Creating notes. Creating posts. Creating lunch for the family. Creating a welcoming bedroom with freshly washed sheets, shutter open with our lemon tree in full view and curling up on top of the comforter with a throw and getting completely lost in a book.
To create is to love. I keep coming back to it. Because creating—really creating—is never neutral. It’s an offering. A way of saying this matters to me, and I want to give it shape. Whether it’s a meal, a made bed, a photograph, a sentence. Romanticising life, I’ve come to believe, isn’t about performance or aesthetics—it’s about loving the ordinary enough to dignify it.
I think about the little bistro table we tucked into our office-bedroom. I never expected it to change the texture of my mornings, but I has. Coffee feels different there. When my son was a toddler, I created what I called “sleep mode” for him in the evenings—dimmed lights, softened voices, a slowing-down of the whole house. I thought I was soothing him, but really, I was soothing all of us. Our nervous systems exhaled together. And even now, the simple act of cooking dinner with a mise en place—every ingredients placed in front of me, just like my dad taught me—turns a chore into something I look forward to all afternoon.
None of these are grand gestures. They’re the small, almost invisible acts of care. But that’s the whole point of it.
Which leads me to a question I sit with often, especially as someone who shares her life online—when we share, are we doing it from the ego or the soul? The ego shares to be seen. The soul shares to connect—to say here, this brought me joy, maybe it will bring you some too. The difference is subtle, but you can feel it, both as the one creating and the one receiving. One leaves you a little emptier. The other fills your cup, and someone else’s too.
A friend recently said to me that romanticising life is God’s protection of the world. The line stopped me. It made me think of the intention I set at the beginning of this year—to create and share only the things that speak to my heart. And maybe she’s right. When we slow down and look around us—at our own homes, our families, our communities—seeing the world as a romantic does become its own act of devotion. It inspires others to find the joy in the small things, too.
On the calendar
I’m hoping this month we get to enjoy our balcony spaces more before the heat really settle in. Spring is the absolute best time for outdoor living—comfortable weather, lighter layers, long slow evenings outside. And this year especially, after one of the rainiest, coldest winters we’ve had in years, it feels well-earned.
My intention for the month is to get as much content out as I can, with the sole purpose of connecting with you all. Just sharing. There’s so much that’s been inspiring me lately, and I’m genuinely excited to bring you along—the pieces I’m eyeing for spring-summer, the home finds I keep returning to, the trips coming up and the everyday rhythms of Southern Greece life.
If you’d like a slower, more personal version of all this, I send out a weekly newsletter called The Sunday Notes—part journal, part diary of the week, part things I’m loving and want to pass along. It’s where I get to share thoughts, moments, inspiration that don’t always make it to the blog. I’d love to have you there.
So for the month of May, consider this month’s Notes my soul, gently nudging yours to create whatever your version of the bistro table is, the dinner made with a little more intention, the corner of your home you’ve been meaning to tend to. Create it. Not for the photo, not for anyone else. Just because the act of shaping your day with love changes everything that happens inside it and maybe, in some small way, the world around it too.
Happy Protomagia, friends. May this season of renewal bring you closer to the things and the people that fill your cup.