Belonging invites us, at times, to embrace our experience itself to be overflowing with its essence. It helps to both look forward AND look back:
I am coming off a very busy weekend full of belonging-at-large and self-belonging.
This morning, Monday-ist of Monday mornings, I am not feeling as together as I usually am because of that very busy weekend full of belonging-at-large.
My October blog schedule calls for Saturday reviews of the week in the past and then beginning again, fresh on Monday. If you are thinking “wait a second, neither of those have happened” you would be accurate in your assessment.
It is 6:30 am on Monday morning as I write this. I am sitting at my desk eating my breakfast casserole (thanks to food prepping) and sipping coffee. I have managed to get my backpack ready and by the door, I am fully dressed even with accessories, and I have shared my focused time of writing practice and life prep with partners in Australia, Europe and now, with a friend also in North America as I start my last half hour before I go to work, smooshing in as much goodness and joy and productivity into the beginning of the week as possible.
This schedule – starting the day at 5 am with an hour of writing – helps me in both the belonging with others and also belonging to and with myself because writing – and creative entrepreneurship – is something I value highly.
I recognize I go to a jobby-job three days a week that fills tidily into the box that responds to the question, “What do you do?” for many people. For me, where I go on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays is more about “where I go” and “how do I contribute to the community I live in right now.”
My real work day starts at 5 am until 7 am and begins again when school ends and I hit the trail or the library or the desk and create, freely, with all of you in mind.
Part of the deep joy that comes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays is I can truthfully say when I am there, I am completely content to be there. I am devoted to the students and my co-workers. I am undercover about my creative career.
Now I am seeing the leap from my school-life to the rest of my life as a super she-ro dropping into that transitional space – like on Star Trek they have the place they go in order to be beamed down to their assignment or Batman and Robin going to the Bat cave and taking off, purposefully and ready for whatever is calling them forward to take their place in serving the world.
I won’t even get this written in time until after I return from the trail, and my most magical local space much later today.
It is so much later, I forgot I had written this and left it unattended… which is fine because I am going to take a few moments and write about the spot on the trail where I felt the ultimate level of place belonging.
This weekend created an odd blend of belonging and hangover… and I hope to do it again, soon.
Julie JordanScott is a Creative Life Coach, an award-winning storyteller, actor and poet whose photos and mixed media art graces the walls of collectors across the United States. Her writing has appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers List, the Amazon best sellers list and on American Greetings Holiday cards (and other greeting cards). She currently lives in a manse in Sussex, NJ, where she has recently finished her most recent book project, hugging trees daily and enjoys having random inspirational conversations with strangers.
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