“How do you do it?”
People often tell me, “I don’t know how you do it.”
And honestly? I never really know what to say to that because while I know people mean well, sometimes it feels like a pity party that I’m not hosting and for sure wasn’t even planning to attend.
How do any of us do it?
You just do it!
You wake up. You brush your teeth. You stare at yourself in the mirror, looking mildly unhinged, and say, “Alright, self, today we will attempt to be our best self.”
Yes, I have 3 businesses.
Yes, I have 3 kids, all beautifully somewhere on the spectrum of something.
And yes, I also have at least 3 personalities myself, so I guess everything in my life comes in 3’s.
But the truth is everybody has their version of hard.
Some people are struggling financially. Some emotionally. Some mentally. Some quietly. Some loudly on Facebook. Different crises, different battles, different chaos.
There are definitely days where I feel like I can’t do it. Days when I want to crawl into bed and disassociate on TikTok. But we can’t focus only on the hard parts all the time or they will swallow us whole.
And one thing I’m still learning – and probably always learning – is to not take everything so personally. Lord knows small island life alone could send somebody into cardiac arrest if they did.
Instead, look around.
Look where we live.
Yes, the sargassum smells. It absolutely does, Jorge. But once you swim past it… there’s beauty.
And honestly, isn’t that kind of what San Pedro does best? We complain, we stress, we panic a little, and then somehow there are some people who still show up every single day trying to make things better. Cleaning beaches, finding solutions, starting projects, protecting tourism, protecting livelihoods, trying to protect this little island we all love even while arguing in Facebook comments about it.
That matters.
Life is kind of like the sargassum sometimes. Messy. Heavy. Annoying. A little stinky…okay Sometimes really stinky!
But there is still beauty if you’re willing to keep swimming.
Xo
Melody
Island Notes from a Woofer is a personal column by Melody S Wolfe blending island life, culture, humor, nostalgia, motherhood, community conversations, random observations, personal experiences, art, business, relationships, social commentary, and whatever else happens to wander through her beautifully chaotic neurodivergent brain that week.
Inspired by the legacy of Wolfe Woofers while evolving into something more personal and reflective, this column is part island diary, part storytelling, part open journal, and part love letter to San Pedro – the old, the new, the beautiful, the frustrating, and everything in between.