May Ings

Books, John O'Donohue, music, Keats, cameras, celebrations, and more.

May 31, 2026

And here we are, wrapping up May with a bow~ five months into the year. How is it almost halfway over now?

I think this is the first year I never fully recovered from my winter creative lull. It has actually been quite shocking and it seems the harder I try to get it back, the more I push it away. So I do what I’m good at, a baseline creative level of sorts to keep the pulse beating, which is floral photography over the spring and calligraphy for my etsy shop. But we’re heading into summer now, the fields of flowers are fading, and I’m being sent back to start.
I don’t know if it’s the news of the world, personal happenings, or what but I am starting to feel desperate.

I just started a new journal and wanted to find a little salutation to write in the front to bring in positive energy~

This blessing by John O’Donohue was perfect so I want to share it with you in case you need to hear it too ~

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

May the light of your soul guide you.
May the light of your soul bless the work
You do with the secret love and warmth of your heart.
May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul.
May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light and renewal to those
Who work with you and to those who see and receive your work.
May your work never weary you.
May it release within you wellsprings of refreshment, inspiration and excitement.
May you be present in what you do.
May you never become lost in the bland absences.
May the day never burden you.
May dawn find you awake and alert, approaching your new day with dreams,
Possibilities and promises.
May evening find you gracious and fulfilled.
May you go into the night blessed, sheltered and protected.
May your soul calm, console and renew you.

Finding | This is quite random but last summer I was trying to find John Keats written letter to Fanny Brawn that included the lines “I almost wish were butterflies and lived but three summer days, three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.”
Even though it’s a famous line, the museums that contain his works did not have it in any of the archives I sifted through. At random, I decided to re-search for it a couple weeks ago and I figured out why!

Apparently, the letters were stolen and last spring (2025) a man in NYC brought in some old books to a rare book shop to sell and one of them were John Keats missing letters! The shop reported the letters and after an intense investigation they were returned to the “rightful owners” on Long Island who will now decide what to do with them. This includes deciding to allow them to be scanned for viewing online, which I really hope happens! They seem to only show one page of the letters whenever it’s mentioned in an article.
Fingers crossed!

Reading | The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger - A book about the magical world of plants and how they adapt, thrive, and co-exist with us. If you like Robin Wall Kimmerer’s books you will like this too. The way plants can communicate with each other and create certain chemicals in their leaves for the bugs around them is so interesting to read about. It really makes you look at the entire world differently.

The Nantucket Inn by Pamela Kelley - A young woman gets fired from her journalism job in Boston and decides to go home to Nantucket where her mom decides to turn her home into a bed & breakfast. We hear from the mom and 4 siblings throughout the book. It’s a series of 9 books and I think the rest go into more detail of each person in the family. I thought it was a cute summer novel if you need a light beach read.

Our Perfect Storm by Carley Fortune - The latest by Carley Fortune and it’s another summer hit. It’s about 2 childhood best friends. One’s marriage falls through so the friends go on the honeymoon together.

On Women by Susan Sontag- Essays on womanhood with ageism, fascism, feminism, beauty, and more. We may have come a way, but I don’t know that we’ve come a long way. The way just looks a bit different. So much to do, yet.

Listening | to so many things. Here are my top spotify playlists~

Summer ‘26 - I just started putting this one together so it’s not done yet but I’m looking forward to building it over the next month or two. I want it to feel like Summer ‘25 below but with more female vocalists.

Summer ‘25 - One of my favorite playlists I’ve made. It reminds me of road tripping to yosemite and zion national park last summer. It feels like sunshine and the open road.

High Vibrational Frequencies - I’ve been playing this in the early mornings while I do yoga and journal. I don’t know that listening to these frequencies work for anything, I’d like to think they do, but it does give a calm atmosphere.

Ben Howard - I push play on the first song listed and let it go through his entire discography. I love Ben Howard and the way he plays guitar. His music always feeds my well of inspiration.

Looking | through Georgia O’Keeffe’s catalog that is now entirely online! Her paintings, writings, photographs, belongings, and so much more.
Her cursive writing makes me think of cavatappi noodles.

Watching | My 7 year old and I are watching the entire RL Stine Goosebumps series on Tubi. We’re watching it on the projector in the late evenings when it gets dark. While they were spooky as a kid, they definitely hit differently as an adult. There’s one that made me laugh last week about a kid going to “camp nightmare”. (Spoiler: don’t read this if you want to watch it LOL) To keep it brief, he goes to a summer camp in the middle of the woods where other kids are bitten by snakes, drown, go missing, and there’s some kind of bear creature lurking around. After all of his cabin mates have disappeared and the camp counselors deny the kids even existed, he’s forced to shoot the main counselor with a stun gun they said they were going to use on a girl from the girl camp. When he shoots the counselor they all cheer and said he passed the test. To which he was like “wtf”. And then all the kids and his parents come out of the woods cheering and his parents said they’re going on a mission somewhere really dangerous and have to bring him so the whole thing was a test to see if he could pass and survive there. And he asked where, so they all look up in the sky and you see earth in the distance. LOLOL.

Also watching | I love finding those small youtube accounts that film videos for the art of it, usually shot on iphone. Here’s a good example of that~

Live a little…

He has some other lovely videos as well.

Using | A campsnap camera. It came today so I don’t have any pictures with it yet but I plan to use it as my main summer camera. I love that it has no screen so there are elements of surprise and anticipation like ye olden days. It’s also very light and will fit comfortably in any bag. In my last post I mentioned I applied for the ambassador program and they said no. Lol. But that’s ok, they did give me an “affiliate link” to share but I’m mainly in it for my own creative ventures and to test it out for fun anyway.

Celebrating | My older daughter graduated from high school this week. I can’t believe how fast this time has gone by. I can’t believe I have an adult child. I’m looking forward to our summer together before college and making lots of memories. I’ve loved every summer I’ve spent with her and I hope whatever the future brings, we will always come together at some point in the summers to do nothing and everything, to exist in the same pocket of sunshine for a while with good food, laughter, and love.

Making | I think I’m finally ready to tackle a physical photo album. I have so many photos that sit on my computer just waiting for the day it fails. I’ve saved photos on external drives but even those seem to begin to corrupt after some years. While searching for photos on a couple external drives, I’ve noticed photos/files older than 15 years can start to pixelate in strange ways, some even have half the photos gone, as in one picture looks cut in half because of dead pixels. I guess even external drives aren’t forever. I am not a cloud user. I don’t like the idea of my personal things out in the ether for anyone to snatch up (or train AI with~ the horror). So my only other option, really, is to turn my favorite digital things into physical things and tote them around the rest of my life. Lol. But I can’t wait to sift through my several years of photos and pick out maybe 20-40 per year to print and paste them in an album or two. I think I’ll create one for family photos and one for nature/landscape photos.

Well, that’s all from me for now. What have you been up to? Any good summer book recs?

x,
Courtney

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