It was during the pandemic when Calgary singer-songwriter Maclayne decided she needed less direction in her life.

With most of the world locked down, it was perhaps counter-intuitive to what many were looking for at the time.

But Maclayne was feeling burned out before COVID-19 hit. In December 2020, she decided to quit her job, sell her belongings and book a one-way flight to Nicaragua.

Music had long been a part of her life. She is an accredited music therapist with a Bachelor of Music Therapy from Capilano University in Vancouver. While growing up in Calgary, she studied classical piano and would attend her jazz pianist grandfather’s big-band concerts. Later, she studied operative voice performance at the University of Calgary. But in the years following her graduation from university, she had been unable to find any spark for songwriting. It all made her feel numb. Then she spent six months in Nicaragua.

On Ometepe island – known as a gathering spot for hippies and self-reflection – Maclayne began writing songs for the first time in years.

“The reason I went on this trip was that I got this really deep fascination with the idea of intuition and what could happen if I didn’t have a plan,” she says. “Up until that point in my life, I had been going to grade school and then high school and then university and then going to another university. I just really wanted to see what direction I would grow if I had no plan. So I went travelling and it was during COVID. The reason I chose Nicaragua was there were no restrictions there and it was easy to travel there at the time. That was the only reason. I found a freedom there that I hadn’t experienced before. I met a lot of other travellers who were soul-searching. I had a lot of conversations and connected with certain types of people that I had never met before. Something about that really helped me to reconnect with my creativity.”