I’ve been collating the remote digital bits to my life of late. Online health checks, Montreal clinics for a doctor, mentors for design and business, online co-working, and Zoom-based social gatherings. These fill holes that I find can’t be filled in our remote summer paradise.

I signed up with the Start-up Zone again last summer in the hopes that I might use the space to fill that need to be around people during the workday. In the dead of winter, I find my Montague office very isolating, and the old men at Home Hardware can only be so accommodating. I never got to the Start-up Zone but made some great connections.

It’s not official, but that resource will cease operations at the end of May. It was always an odd place, but I found my year as a resident company incredibly useful. It was very active and busy, with plenty of opportunities to connect with people and learn new perspectives. It has never recovered from the COVID shutdowns and has received little direction from the board until now. Other organizations have been trying to fill the gap, like PEIBWA, a strangely female-only resource, and Innovation PEI, which has recently published some material to help would-be entrepreneurs. Neither have an environment conducive to the magic of a happenstance connection with a peer.

However, I have found a couple of other local organizations with programs I am starting to enjoy. Creative PEI is running a course I joined, which will follow Julia Cameron’s The Artists Way. I particularly enjoy trying to write my Morning Pages every day. They also have an Artist’s Support group, which I attended. It’s comforting to be around people who live through the same challenges as you, who are not obsessed with leveraging real estate assets as their primary output, and who make things because they feel they need to be made.

I have been a member of the PEI Writers Guild for a couple of years(?), but I have never participated in any of their events. However, they have a monthly writers’ meet-up that I will attend. If I can summon the courage, I plan on reading at their monthly readings at The Gallery.

While so much of what I do seems to be increasingly done off-Island (relying on off-Island health services is an odd one), it’s wonderful that there are still some opportunities to connect here locally.