Is it sad that I require public accountability to consistently do something that brings me creative joy? That is essentially why I am here, vowing to document and share my adventures for all to see.

A few things inspired this mission. For one, my creative mind is beginning to feel like an overstuffed junk drawer, chock-full of junk and gems that require sorting.

It’s as if the unwritten thoughts are accumulating, like rust on an aging automobile. Literally, like the pile of half-filled notebooks on my bookshelf, each containing earnest attempts at poetry and prose for the first few pages, inevitably giving way to task-oriented lists: “groceries,” “goals,” “gift ideas,” etc., followed by unfilled pages, left blank as I’ve tittered off to complete each list and the never-ending onslaught of lists that follow.

Another is that I attended a creative essay writing workshop this Fall at Interlochen Center for the Arts that stoked my insatiable urge to write. A theme came out of my writing. Regardless of the prompt, my output veered toward celebrating the place I call home: Northern Michigan. It’s a theme I plan to bring to this project, and it inspired the name “Northern Soul.”

Lastly, it was my new year’s resolution. Unfortunately, it seems very off-trend to set a new year’s resolution at all. Most of the women I admire from afar online tout ditching resolutions and focusing on improving yourself year-round. I get the sentiment. But sometimes I feed off of that fire-in-the-belly-inducing sense of New Year’s energy. I get the same feeling in the fall.

I’ve tended toward the same self-soothers my whole life: nature, exercise, organizing, cleaning, lists, and writing. As I’ve aged, I’ve let the writing slip. I write every day in my work, but never in the creative, fun, and restorative way I always did as a child, as a student, and as a young woman in love.

So, Northern Soul came to be. I grew up in southwest Michigan and I have lived in Northern Michigan for 6 short years. I consider living here an incredible privilege. I treasure the way mid-Michigan’s flat farmland gives way to our rolling hills of emerald vineyards, secret beaches, orchards, dunes, and wooded county roads. I crave the way Lake Michigan and Lake Superior fill me with inexplicable peace. But what I covet most is the feeling of possibility that hangs in the air, and the grit of the people who live here.

This place has soul. Our people have entrepreneurial and outdoorsy spirits. We see the magic and the peace rather than the inconvenience and the mess in our remote location and relentless winters. My mission is to share some of that spirit and soul with you. I hope I inspire you to explore, move, and enjoy this sublime, mitten-shaped peninsula in the upper Midwest.