Skipping Spring: How I've managed 3 Fall Equinoxes in a Row
And how each equinox has brought a new level of discovery
It’s been quite a year! 3 Fall equinoxes in a row.
March 20, 2025
For the first time in my life, I was celebrating Fall Equinox in March. We arrived in Antarctica, the most adventurous place I’ve ever been, on March 20. What an incredible experience! But it meant that we would be missing Spring back home in Canada, one of my favourite seasons. I would miss the early blossoms on my neighbour’s fruit trees, and we’d already be turning towards much warmer days when we got back.
September 22, 2025
On my second Fall equinox of 2025 I had just launched this Substack publication. While I love Spring, I really love Fall where I live. The blistering heat of the summer has passed, and we can move more activities back outdoors. I re-open what I refer to as my ‘outdoor office’ on my back deck. I spend hours in the gentler sun writing and reading.
To celebrate 6 months of Jumble of Sea Glass, I’m going to do an overview of some of my posts that have reached the most readers. Maybe you’ll find something that you’ve missed that you might enjoy.
March 20, 2026
This year, I’m back in the Southern Hemisphere where we are transitioning out of the rainy season into Fall. I’ll miss Spring again. But the coming days will bring less rain and more sunny days. That feels just perfect for me.
If Spring means regeneration, then this is still Spring for me. I’m taking on new challenges, learning new skills, and actively pursuing the things that matter to me.
I’m spending 6 weeks in Cuzco, Perú, exploring, but also creating.
I’ll be sharing more in the weeks ahead about this special time I’ve set aside just for me and my creative pursuits, but for now, let’s look back on 6 months in this teensy corner of the internet: Jumble of Sea Glass.
Jumble of sea glass.
Shattered. Wave tumbled. Sand scraped.
Edges softened. Found.
The origin story of Jumble of Sea Glass can be found here.
This is an excerpt:
I love the hunt (for sea glass), and the not knowing if you’ll find anything. And then you do.
I fill my hands, I fill my pockets. I hoard these treasures. I line them up in different coloured patterns.
I wonder how they came to be with me – the journey they took from broken bottle to perfect gem.
In my mind, sea glass is a pretty good metaphor for lessons learned through hardship, beauty that comes from brokenness, and the weathering that allows us to be our best selves.
Maybe a pocketful of sea glass represents wisdom, hoarded and hard won.
Maybe that jumble of sea glass is a symbol. The symbol of all the things we’ve learned on our journey.
Six months of Sea Glass
My most viewed stories have been related to my reading life, and I have to credit Anne Bogel’s What Should I Read Next for that. Anne encourages others who write about books and reading to post links to their website, and that has drastically increased traffic on the following book related posts if you are interested: January in books, Two things happened on the way to my TBR pile, and My best reading experiences of 2025.
On a more philosophical note, my most viewed post was about my experience last summer with deep existential crisis and midlife malaise, and how a single book shifted my perception and helped me choose a different path.
You can read this post, Everything, but Not Enough, or you can listen to the audio version here.
Do you miss the audio versions of Jumble of Sea Glass?
I’d be happy to return to creating audio content if I knew there were people listening.
In case you missed it
Here are the posts on jumble of Sea Glass that have garnered the most likes.
Choosing the writing life (soon)
This was my post from 2 weeks ago about transitioning from my regular life to my upcoming creative retreat (I’m in it now), and the period in between, an interregnum of sorts.
Celebrating Winter Solstice (December 21)
Winter Solstice is my primary December holiday, and this piece focuses on the 7 days leading up to December 21, and my journal entries I referred to as Writing into the darkness. Listening back now, 3 months later, I can see how important these musings were as I was deep into making decisions about how I want my remaining life to be.
You can read this post here, or have a listen.
Legacy: What will I leave behind? (November 23)
This piece was some deep thinking about our responsibilities to our adult children and to our aging parents. But it is also an exploration on what we owe to ourselves.
You can read the article here or you can choose to listen to the audio.
Please let me know if you want me to bring back the audio version of Jumble of Sea Glass.
JL Orr | Paradox & Sea Glass
Currently in Cuzco, Perú
Based in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia in Canada
I also publish The Travel Paradox every Wednesday.
