Byline: What a Tidepool Taught Me About the Stories We Tell Ourselves

If you’ve ever found yourself poking around a tidepool, maybe during a beach trip or an educational field trip in grade school, you know the magic of it. At first glance, there’s not much going on—some splashes of water, maybe a sea star if you’re lucky. But the longer you look, the more you see: tiny hermit crabs swapping shells like a frantic game of musical chairs, anemones waving their delicate tentacles in the current, and even the faint, slow motion of a limpet on the move (you know, if you squint real hard). To me, writing has always felt like tidepooling. You have to pause, look closely, and let the story reveal itself in its own time. And more often than not, what’s underneath the surface is way more alive, way more complex, than you ever expected.

But here’s the thing: writing isn’t just looking. It’s also digging. The shoreline might crash with chaos—the deadlines, the rejection emails, the self-doubt that whispers, “Is anyone even going to read this?”—but you show up anyway, notebook in hand, willing to sit in the splash zone. That’s why I write. It’s an exercise in curiosity, in stubbornness, and—if we’re being honest—in learning how to find beauty in the messiest parts of life.

Why Stories Matter (And Not Just the Big, Cinematic Ones)

Let’s get one thing straight: you do not have to scale Mount Everest or survive a zombie apocalypse to have a story worth telling. Some of the best stories, at least in my experience, are caught in the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments. Like the time I watched my dad, a big-hearted organic grocery magnate (or so I like to call him), proudly declare himself “a master of romance” after crafting a smoothie for my mom that was basically blended kale with a side of mango. (Spoiler alert: she did not find this romantic. At all.)

Life, like romance, isn’t all sweeping grand gestures. It’s also the everyday stuff—how you connect with the world around you and with others. Writing taught me to pay attention to those quiet, fleeting moments. It also gave me permission to laugh at the absurdity of it all, which, let’s be real, is sometimes the only way to survive a particularly awkward first date or a junior high poetry phase no one asked to remember.

The Art of Getting it “Wrong” (Because Perfection is Boring)

Here’s the thing about growing up along the coast: you learn early on that waves don’t care about your plans. You could spend hours setting up the perfect seashell arrangement for that “casual” Instagram shot (speaking for a friend, obviously) only for the tide to swoop in and wreck it all. Writing, much like dating or life in general, works the same way. You can plan. You can brainstorm. You can color-code your sticky notes with a neurotic intensity that would make a Type A personality swoon. But the outcome? Always unpredictable.

Take my first big writing project—a collection of nonfiction essays about my hometown. I poured every ounce of my La Jolla soul into describing tidepools and surfers waxing their boards at sunrise. Passionate, purpose-driven, and packed with metaphors about barnacles (#branding). But when it hit shelves, guess what I heard more than once? “Cool book, but it’s not really about marine biology, is it?”

At first, that comment stung. But then it clicked. The real heart of my book wasn’t the science; it was the stories—about belonging, about growing up stuck between surf culture and sustainability lectures, about the ways the ocean teaches us to adapt. Those “mistakes” in early drafts, the ones that veered away from pure fact into something more personal? They weren’t failures. They were the point. Same rule applies whether you’re drafting an essay or attempting to navigate the minefield that is texting someone you’re into without overthinking the number of exclamation points. (One: confident but polite. Two or more: chaos.)

Writing as Connection—Even When No One’s Reading

When I was nine, I wrote a letter to the Pacific Ocean. I used a sparkly gel pen and signed it “Julianne, Future Marine Adventurer,” because why commit halfway when you can go full-on Lisa Frank vibes? That letter—which was, for the record, mostly complaints about how annoying it was when my boogie board flipped over—started something in me. It wasn’t just about writing for others. It was about speaking to something bigger than myself, something vast and unknowable and a little terrifying (aka: middle school, void of crush-worthy prospects).

Now, many years and many words later, I’ve learned that writing is, at its core, how I connect—with the world around me, with the people I love, and with the parts of myself I don’t fully understand until I’ve written them down. And sure, not everything I write ends up on the page or screen. Some of it’s just for me. But even those “private” pieces help build a bridge to the outside world. It feels a lot like the start of a new relationship—scary, exhilarating, and incredibly necessary if you want to grow.

When the Story Writes Me Back

What’s wild is that writing keeps changing me, even when I think I have it all figured out. Case in point: the first time I wrote about heartbreak. I was twenty-two, fresh off a break-up, and channeling Taylor Swift’s Red album like it was my full-time job. I wrote what I thought was a moving, poetic piece about how relationships are like waves that suck you under. (Still unsure if I was talking about rip currents or feelings.) But by draft five, I realized it wasn’t really about my ex—it was about me coming up for air, finally curious about who I was without someone else shaping the narrative.

That’s the best part of writing, honestly. It’s a mirror, a map, and sometimes, yes, a mildly embarrassing diary entry all rolled into one. It shows you where you’ve been, but it also lets you imagine where you could go next.

The Tide Rolls In, and I Keep Writing

Not to get all “the ocean is a metaphor for life” on you (but, like, let me have this one), but writing will always feel like standing at the edge of the shore. Some days, the stories flow easily, like the low tide revealing every hidden shell and treasure. Other days, you’re fighting to keep your footing as a rogue wave smacks you right in the face. Either way, you keep showing up, because the tide will always bring something new if you’re patient enough to wait for it.

So, why do I write? I write because even in the mess—the rewrites, the rejections, the backspace key getting more action than I do most weekends—there’s magic in discovering something unexpected. I write because stories, ours and others’, are how we build connections that ripple out infinitely. And selfishly, I write because I still want a reason to poke around tidepools, looking for clues in the chaos.

That, and kale smoothies will never have the final word in my family—they need an editor.