A Day in My Writing Life in Panama
People often imagine authors hunched over a desk, scribbling in silence. Idyllic, right? My reality of my writing life in the Panamanian cloud forest? Not exactly what you might imagine.
I live on a mountainside in Panama with, Dianne, my life partner and heart throb. Our mornings start with feeding Cat (a very vocal rescue kitty), organizing our coffee farm employees, and French pressing a perfect pot of our own Café Mariposa Azul. Then comes the avalanche of emails, product inquiries, and if I’m not careful a little doom scrolling through social media.
If we’re lucky, we take a few minutes outside to watch the mist lift from the valley. A noisy flock of parrots swoops past. A giant blue morpho butterfly flits between flowers. Hummingbirds duel, darting and buzzing as they guard their turf. And sometimes one of our resident agoutis ambles by. What’s an agouti? Imagine a guinea pig, but twenty pounds and two feet long. They love the fruit and veggie scraps we toss out. These wild neighbors, big and small, never fail to make us smile.
By nine o’clock, the focus shifts from butterflies to botanicals. Cloud Forest Botanicals, the herbal and CBD wellness company Dianne) and I founded back in 2010, grounds me in plants, formulas, and the real-world needs of people searching for wellness.
After lunch, if I’m lucky and don’t have to run a thousand errands (anything from buying organic fertilizer for the coffee to coaxing another year out of my fifteen-year-old Honda), I retreat to the terrace to write. That part is idyllic: a sprawling valley before me, the Pacific glimmering in the distance.
But sometimes the writing just doesn’t happen.
Writing is a muscle—you train it, you show up, even when the words resist. I don’t wait on inspiration, though she’s welcome when she visits. When the muse is in a good mood, the story unfolds. When she isn’t, well, there’s always tomorrow.
Curiosity, resilience, and a little magic from these Panamanian mountains—both the writing and the botanicals grow from the same soil. I am grateful for all of it.
How about you? Where does your muse live?