30 Days by the Sea is my creative research project, completed as an Master of Art’s Candidate in Human Rights and Social Justice at Thompson Rivers University on Secwépemc Territory, Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada.
About the Project
In January 2026, I spent thirty days alone by the Sea of Cortez in Loreto, Baja California Sur, Mexico. I wrote every day. I photographed every day. I rested, and I remembered how to play, and I let my nervous system begin to find its footing again after twenty-five years of precarious academic labour that had slowly accumulated in my body as what I name a slow violation of the human right to rest.
This blog documents that inquiry. It is a creative thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Master of Arts in Human Rights and Social Justice at Thompson Rivers University. It is written in the tradition of Scholarly Personal Narrative (Nash, 2004), a methodology that holds the researcher’s lived experience as legitimate data, and storytelling as a valid form of rigorous inquiry. It is also, simply, the story of a woman going to the sea to find out whether rest is still possible.
The Central Concept: Alonetude
This project introduces and develops the concept of alonetude, a term I coined to describe a positive, integrated, and intentional relationship with being alone. Alonetude is distinct from loneliness (which is marked by unwanted isolation and disconnection) and from classical solitude (which carries connotations of romanticised withdrawal). Alonetude is the third shore: the place where one can be fully present to oneself, in the world, without performance, without audience, and without apology.
I argue that the capacity for alonetude; for resting in one’s own company, is a human right, and that precarious labour systematically strips people of this capacity by making rest feel dangerous, guilty, or simply unavailable.
About Me
I am a white, settler, cisgender woman completing a Master of Arts in Human Rights and Social Justice at Thompson Rivers University on Secwépemc Territory. I have worked as a contract instructor in post-secondary education for twenty-five years. I am a writer, a photographer, artist, and someone who is learning, slowly, that stillness is also a form of scholarship. I use Scholarly Personal Narrative as my primary research methodology. I am committed to trauma-informed, arts-based, and somatic approaches to inquiry. I believe that the human body is an archive of everything institutions prefer to leave unnamed.
How to Navigate This Blog
This blog contains 80 posts across several types of writing: daily journal entries, scholarly essays, bilingual reflections in Spanish and English, original poems, memory pieces, and vignettes. If you are new here, the best place to begin is the Start Here page, which lists all posts in their intended reading order. You may also browse by category using the navigation menu.
Some posts contain content warnings noting reflections on trauma, grief, childhood experiences, and the body’s memory of harm. These are marked at the beginning of each relevant post. Please care for yourself as you read.
This project was completed on Secwépemc Territory. I acknowledge with gratitude and respect that I live, work, and write on the unceded traditional territory of the Secwépemc People.