Creative Life Midwife

Inspiring Artistic Rebirth

Build Momentum: Be Willing to Risk Writing Badly (again and again and again.)

by

Yesterday, Eleanor Roosevelt reminded me “With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.” This blog post doesn’t have much of either content wise and yet there is strength, courage and even a few quiet chuckles in hitting the “publish” button.

Today’s thoughts come courtesy of a long ago writing prompt I wrote for writers who aspired increased boldness.

The original blog post is filled with prompts to make you consider risk-taking in your writing and strengthening yourself to be more mindfully bold. At the bottom of my 5 minute writing, I will share the link to the original post so that you may access all the prompts, too.

“To take that risk, to offer life and remain alive, open yourself like this and become whole.”

Margaret Atwood

I took a risk this weekend that seems so foolish I almost hesitate to claim it. Risks seem like such big things, like jumping out of an airplane or quitting one’s job and running off to the south of France to stomp grapes or something more consequential than rebranding a facebook group or announcing a new program.

Yet if there wasn’t inherent risk, why would I have procrastinated so long?

And why don’t we take more risks, why don’t we flex our courage muscle more regularly and with more panache.

Even in the writing of this, Katherine came into the room and it feels like a risk to continue writing and it feels like a risk to not continue writing.

It is a risk to continue writing when it feels like it is going so badly.

= = =

Take two, after delivering Samuel to school and going to the grocery store to get yogurt to calm my belly.

I had to stop and start again because the television was too loud (space sharing) and the sound of my fingers hitting the keyboard with my headphones on is somehow more distracting than without. That is, my silenced headphones and now – we are back.

I took a risk by admitting my failure openly on the first round.

What if people never speak to me, leave my facebook group or point and laugh because I didn’t succeed using my own methods and prompts?

I hear my kinder gentler self: “You wouldn’t want to spend time with those sorts of people anyway, now would you?”

I get back on track and keep moving my fingers.

It is a risk to admit our failures and in our culture, for women, it is oftentimes a risk to tout our successes for fear of seeming a show-off or a braggart. I cringe when people tell me, as an actor, “You stole the show!”

No, I can’t steal the show, that isn’t nice!

I risk a lot when I disagree or don’t stand in total alignment with people I love. I’ve gotten the brunt of this in the last year with friends seeming to forget I exist and the invitations have diminished because I am not a “one-line” thinker, instead I risk believing what I believe and not allowing their opinions of those beliefs to get in my way.

I risk dying alone.

I laugh at that high drama, but sometimes it feels that way when we take risks.

It feels like it is too much to bear.

I risk publishing that high drama especially after failing at my own techniques just a moment ago.

I hear the applause and I cringe.

I didn’t fail this time. I got thoughts on the page – at least partially coherent. Useful for some form of content?

Perhaps.

Thinking I’ll swipe a line for a poem and see what more these risks want to tell me – and perhaps tell you – in the process.

Eeep. Next comes publish.

 – And here is the promised link to the original prompt – 

Coming Up: 30 Days of Writing Passionately

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist  whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Facebooktwitterpinterest

Building Momentum This Monday: Questions to Guide Your Writing & Life Experience

by

Momentum is based on movement which is difficult to conceptualize when one feels stuck. Movement – stuck. Stuck – movement. Two entirely different and also totally oppositional experiences.

Eleanor Roosevelt reminds me “With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.”

Today all bets have changed. My lack of movement yesterday (or many assembled yesterdays) may have become a practiced experience and yet they don’t need to define me. I am sitting here at my table, preparing for the week ahead.

That is movement. That is momentum.

Each word I stitch together is momentum.

Each time I take five minutes and declare my butt in chair and then move my fingers on the keyboard is an abundance of momentum. The crank is turning, the pencil is sharpening, the project getting closer to completion.

Writing prompts for Sunday Evening and Monday Morning:

What do I want to build momentum toward this week?

When Friday arrives, what will help me feel the most abundance around my accomplishments?

What momentum inducing practices/actions/allegiances will most likely get me from where I am right now to where I want to be on Friday?

What are the first three actions I will take?

 

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist  whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links in the header comments or below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Facebooktwitterpinterest

Healing: One Mindful, Constructive, Forward Facing Action at a Time –

by

Your First step: fill in the image blank: This is how we heal: One ____ at a time. This post is my #5for5BrainDump – I filled in the blank with “conversation” and didn’t necessarily stay on topic!

This is how we heal: one conversation at a time.

I have to confess, I felt pretty frustrated yesterday by a comment someone made and I don’t even want to talk about the comment don’t even want to talk about the context for fear of someone recognizing herself in my words and leap to conclusions about what I am thinking/feeling/choosing when I’m sorry, beloved-perhaps, you can’t know how I am thinking/feeling/choosing because we haven’t had a conversation on the topic lately.

One thing I will confess, though, was when I took an African Culture class my senior year at University of the Pacific. I was hungry for course work focused on Africa because as an International Relations major, I had fallen in love with the study of Africa.

I was an Anglo woman who had (and still hasn’t) visited Africa – and this class was offered under the Black Studies department. I was the only non person of color in the class and in fact, if we had said “person of color” it would have been seen as a racial insult.
One particularly tiring afternoon I said, “You know, I love you all and sometimes I feel like I have to spend every class period here apologizing for my ethnicity.”

In that moment my professor nearly jumped out of his feet with excitement.

“That’s it! Exactly! That’s the feeling!”

I wish I had a photo of my pale face scrunched up with my twenty-one-year-old confused blue eyes looking at him in a perpetual question mark to remind myself not getting it and not having “the” answer is a part of the beloved process.

I started to get it then and now I’m getting it more and more.

I loved that class. I loved my classmate who had transferred from a college from Chicago who said, “I hope someday I know as much as you do about Africa.” And my other friend, sophomore year in my Politics of Africa class who admitted to reading my ten-page single-spaced term paper on Ivory Coast (now known as Côte d’Ivoire) twice because she enjoyed it so much.

I love being an Africanist. I love engaging with my African friends and I love knowing where the African grocery store is in Bakersfield and I love engaging my curiosity and not accepting what people tell me vaguely as truth.

This took longer than five minutes. It took closer to seven.

And I still have so much more to say.

Which I see as a sign of a really good thing.

_ _ _

A few last words: Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.) 
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through with his supper? 
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?
– – – –
Now – your response would be adored.
 
If you take time to write for 5 minutes to it,  I may dance with joy – especially if you post a link:
 
“This is how we heal: one ______  at a time.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist  whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

 

Facebooktwitterpinterest

Move in the Direction that Delights and Compels You Now –

by

“Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.”
Albert Schweitzer

I sat on the big, red rocking chair on my porch this morning, reading Samuel’s English classroom rules. Simply stated, one step after another, one guideline and future assignment building upon the next.

I rocked a moment, looking toward the horizon over my neighbor’s roof and wondered about the day yet to fully arrive. I thought about myself, yet to fully arrive. I looked at the leaves on the mulberry tree who has faithfully offered me shade and more than enough arguments with my neighbors for more than twenty seven years now.

Now I look at the plants on my living room mantel, seeing one that was in the Virginia Woolf room where Emma has been living since she returned from the East Coast. Yesterday I noticed my plant, faded and dried up. “My plant,” I said, a whine in my voice.

“You didn’t tell me to water it,” Emma countered, with a voice even sadder than mine.

“It’s ok,” I whispered. “Just give it to me. I’ll water it, I’m sure it will be ok.”

As I prepared to begin writing, I looked up quotes about trees and found the one below from Joyce Meyer and I hesitated to use it because of her affiliations and worried she might be a part of the vociferous hate streaming out of the vitriol within the hearts of some of the people across my country.

My heart literally hurt at those thoughts.

What has become of us and what will become of us?

I overslept the tiniest bit this morning and didn’t move for too long of a time.

What shall I do first?

The thought came back. “One foot after another. Repeat.”

So this is what I have done, in attempt to keep the depression beasts in their pens and bring out any shred of evidence of all-rightness I can muster.

In trees leaves I hear God-sounds. That’s what Albert Schweitzer must have heard in the trembling of the leaf. He is one of my dead-man crushes so I know he wouldn’t lead me astray. A scientist philosopher, a close observer who reports evidence rather than tangential, second-hand thrice told tales.

I look at the mulberry tree outside the window where I type now for five minutes (and perhaps one extra one.) I see the light of sunrise filtering through her leaves. I see a volunteer bush pushing through my lavender and wonder how I may most effectively replant it.

I believe putting one foot in front of another in a forward moving direction will also move me and my life in the direction that compels and delights me. We can do this. Let’s.

“Consider a tree for a moment. As beautiful as trees are to look at, we don’t see what goes on underground – as they grow roots. Trees must develop deep roots in order to grow strong and produce their beauty. But we don’t see the roots. We just see and enjoy the beauty. In much the same way, what goes on inside of us is like the roots of a tree.”
Joyce Meyer

Here I am writing by the graveside of Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women – a highly successful book that hasn’t been out of print for more than 100 years.

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Facebooktwitterpinterest

Aiming for “Almost Normal” is Sometimes the Best We May Do

by

Vulnerability alert: for the next week or two, I will be modeling the #5for5BrainDump method through writing blog posts in 5 minutes, stream of consciousness style.  Sometimes these posts will be…. more transparent and real than I have been recently. I’m so grateful you are here, reading, even after I warned you.

Now, from this moment until I tell you the timer had stopped – was straight from my heart to my fingers. I had no idea what was coming next. Ready? Walk with me as together we focus on —

I was supposed to be writing something else, but I needed to write this instead so here I am and there you are and together, my prayer is we will find something.

I’ve been preparing for Katherine’s arrival: my precious daughter who I sometimes think of as the “normal” one from the Munster’s or The Addams Family. I feel embarrassed at times because she is so good and so not depressed and so… well, I always worry she will be disappointed in me.

This hasn’t been an easy year by any stretch of the imagination and my depression has been getting deeper and wider and it has been a near constant struggle to gain control. I don’t remember her seeing me “this bad” though because I am pretty practiced at hiding my real feelings, many don’t know how bad it has been.

It is only in the recent past I have reached out for help at all, only in the recent past I’ve told people “Hey, I’m struggling.”

This is after last Summer, when I told someone I thought was a dear friend how bad off I was and that person didn’t speak to me again for – I lost track of how long.

See, that’s the thing.

Those of us who struggle with depression and other invisible diseases often times struggle and try so hard to not let it show that  this particular action: putting a cloaking device over how we really are takes every ounce of effort we have so other stuff gets neglected.

I can’t remember how many times in the past year I’ve fallen asleep in a collapsed heap at the end of the day with the same clothes on, for example.

The only reason I can even write about this is because I’m starting to feel better. At least I think that’s it. I’ve woken up oddly optimistic for the last few days. I’m going to call it “feeling better” because it feels better even proclaiming it so yes, I’ll proclaim it.

My timer just went off saying my five minutes are up, so I will close with this:

There have been several tragic celebrity suicides lately.

There has been unrest in the country where I live because of people hating one another rather than loving one another.

There have been people forgetting the most important thing we can do is look beyond one another’s circumstances and look into one another’s hearts.

You may have someone who seems perfectly fine and then you hear they actually weren’t just fine.

Take time to have a conversation with someone today that goes beyond the surface. Take an extra moment to hold eye contact. Take an extra moment to remind them you are with them and that they are never a bother to you, ever.

To call you or write you or text you whenever the urge strikes. I know in my darkest days I have sat with my phone in my hand thinking there was not a soul out there who would take my call.

Be the one who will take your friend’s call and show up and help and smile and do what your friend or loved one asks for you to do. If they say they don’t know, give them multiple choices. “Do you want to go out for coffee or a walk or get a pedicure with me?”

We may not all be aiming for “normal” or at least “almost normal” whatever that means. I can guarantee each and all of us is aiming for better than feeling consistently not well.

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below and above in the top margin to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

 

Facebooktwitterpinterest

The River: My Restorative Friend & Forever Companion

by

“I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on summer humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.”

Ann Voskamp

As a little girl, I fell in love with the Delaware River and the nameless creek which ran through my home town of Glen Ridge, New Jersey.

When I first moved to Bakersfield I didn’t pay much attention to the Kern River. I was aware there was a river in a mythical canyon I never visited. In Bakersfield itself, there were canals and dry riverbeds. It wasn’t until we had an exchange student named Sandra from the South of France that my children and I engaged with the river as it was actually flowing through town that summer. We discovered it was a fun place to play.

 

Eventually my visits to Bakersfield’s Hart Park’s pond expanded to the river that flows along the park’s border and then the river’s call invited me more deeply into the one-time mythical canyon. It was there I hiked and explored and contemplated the flow rather than stepping into the dangerous Kern River – except on a rare occasion when the call is strong and I was surrounded by people I loved and it seemed perfectly sane though perfectly freezing to climb into the river fully dressed for the just right photos.

I’ve been in a dry spell energetically and my visits to the river have become medicine for my spirit. She is restorative, my deep well of a friend when human friends aren’t spontaneously accessible.

I treasure her song which encourages my voice to return as it is here.

I’m grateful I moved beyond the boundaries of the streets and avenues and sidewalks and into the slightly off kilter lesser traveled roads that meander beside her. They remind me of myself.

Somehow when I am beside the river’s flow, I feel strength in knowing others are “with” me in creative spirit. The absence of my friends “with skin” is less lonely as I tune into my solitude rather than the aloneness.

From Ralph Waldo Emerson and my heart:

“And I behold once more
My old familiar haunts; here the blue river,
The same blue wonder that my infant eye
Admired”

Beloved river, sacred medicine, thank you for who you are whether flowing or not flowing, you bring life to me.

 

Take a mini retreat in the canyon, perhaps… or in a local park.

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Facebooktwitterpinterest

Tales of a Gratitude Convert: How Writing A Love Letter to My Eyeglasses Caused a HUGE shift

by

There was a time when I would describe myself as a “Gratitude Convert”. I had been wayyyy over the top cynical about what I called the whole “phoneys with their attitude of gratitude nonsense!” yet several years ago all that shifted.

I am now a proponent of gratitude from the first hand knowledge of its power in my life. Period.

My practice isn’t what it used to be, though.  I can’t even explain why.  Yesterday and today, I “got” gratitude even more deeply, even as a long time gratitude practitioner. I am thinking I will Re-Start my practice by doing exactly what I did yesterday. Read on to see what I mean:

I read a prompt yesterday when I was in a moment of “I want to write but I just don’t feel inspired by anything!” and voila, my purple eyeglasses caught my attention.  I wrote for sixty seconds. I didn’t come up with anything particularly brilliant, but it – and they – helped me to see into gratitude a bit more deeply.

You know, feeling meaningful gratitude for those every day, mundane items in our lives that we would function less well if we didn’t have them.

I decided to pull the prompt out and write a thank you/love letter to my eyeglasses. Before you read my love letter, find something of yours that is right there, within an arm length. Set it beside or in front of you as you read my love letter.

If you want to feel even more deeply, read my love letter aloud.

Beloved Eyeglasses,

You tirelessly sit on the bridge of my nose, asking for nothing but the occasional cleaning. You help me to see things I could not see without you. Even now, as I get more mature and take you off and leave you places carelessly, you don’t complain.

You never get up and leave me. It is I who consistently leave you.

I feel your generous smile when I put you back up there, straddling my nose, aligning with my ears, fulfilling your sole purpose: to help me see.

Oh, beloved Italian purple eyeglasses, Katherine keeps telling me to get a new pair, that you don’t work as well as you once did for me, that I shouldn’t have to take you off all the time but… I can’t bring myself to switch to a different pair.

Sure, there have been others. My first pair fell into the Delaware River when I was canoeing after my mother warned me, “Don’t go canoeing with your glasses on!” and 

then, there was the time when we sat at the optometrist and I, in a brief moment of prepubescent rebellion told my Mom to just shut up about my going to camp by myself and how brave it was – “Shut up with your praise, Mom!”

You must understand, Purple pair of eyeglasses, this was the back-then equivalent of saying “the “F” word you, Mom…” My glasses have all made me feel braver, I suppose, because with you, I can see.

Without you, everything is blurry.

I remember one spiritual friend of mine insisting glasses are not a real need, that I could use my mind as a visual corrector instead.

I didn’t argue as I don’t usually. I nodded and listened and knew when I have you in my life, my life is simply better.

Oh, beloved purple eyeglasses.

It took this moment for me to see what is right here, in front of my face.

I love you dearly.

Thank you.

Your now even more grateful owner,

Julie

 My eyeglasses are my friend, nearly lifelong friend. Eyeglasses have been a part of my profile since I was in sixth grade and could no longer see the chalk board. I didn’t always wear the same purple pair, but I have always had some always-ready-to-serve eyeglasses close at hand.

I had brief flings with contact lenses and these days, I use them differently, but oh, my glasses. How I love and appreciate the work you do for me.

Writing this love letter meant so much more than just adding them to a list of gratitudes.  I love my gratitude lists and may write them again in the future. For now, I am going to write gratitude love letters to all those mundane, overlooked, underappreciated aspects of my life I normally don’t even notice.

Maybe you’ll even feel compelled to write gratitude love letters along with me.

Try it out. Start with 5 minutes of love for something ordinary.

If you post something – an instagram post, a blog post, anything – please send a link my way. Maybe I’ll end up writing a love letter to YOUR love letter.

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Facebooktwitterpinterest

Let’s Experience, Express & Explore Gratitude.

by

The power of gratitude is undeniable, whether you want to leverage its strength in your business or relationships or your personal growth is up to you.

I won’t even say you’re crazy if you don’t because that’s just not my style but what I will say is coming next.

When you are alert to life as it unfolds around you and you begin to notice the nuances and subtle whispers it offers you, you will begin to experience gratitude in ways you never expected.

Surprise! You are taking a break to just breathe between coaching sessions with clients and a monarch butterfly catches your eye, affirming the work you just completed. Exhale gratitude.

Your clients and that butterfly and every tiny speck and fleck of your unfolding life offer you an invitation into more gratitude exploration.

Your task? To jot some notes right now and continue throughout the day. Invite your awareness to increase. Then ask your subconscious to tag team and make connections between what gratitude shows up and how that interrelates to the solutions to your client’s problem.

What does the monarch butterfly appearing and affirming you have to do with your clients’ most pressing needs?

I can feel you smiling all the way over here. Well, all of you except for you – my dear friend – who thinks you have to control your thought process. That’s ok too, really, except try for a second to breathe into the gratitude and exhale the solution without thinking about the solution – think instead about the gratitude and let your subconscious mind bring the goods on the solution.

We’ve got you!

One last thing? Please let me know how it goes.

(This post was written using the model I explored in a previous blog post over on Julie Unplugged, “How to Become a Better Writer Using Instagram. Check it out and see how I followed along.)

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Facebooktwitterpinterest

Reawakening Love for The Writing Process Itself

by

It is one of the most powerful questions you may ask yourself: “What do I really, truly want in this wild and wonderful life I’ve been given?”

As writers, we may ask specifically about our writing, “What do I really, truly want to create with my writing? How do I want my writing process to feel?”

We may ask, “How may I awaken my love for the writing process?”

I wish I  could tell you the answer naturally rushes out in a beautifully crafted message right from my subconscious to my keyboard.

It doesn’t usually happen like that. Instead, a process we come to know as even more delicious than instantly having an answer takes place and instead of just “getting an answer” I give myself room to fall back in love with writing.

Stay with me so you may deepen or fall in love all over again with both your creative process AND your life.  I will share with you what I wrote in five minutes. I am taking that risk, I am allowing you into my own writing perfect imperfections. It is scary for me AND I am willing to go there because it is so important for each of us.

“When love awakens in your life, it is like a rebirth, a new beginning.”

John O’Donohue

I started to write:

Think outside of the realm of romantic love now.

If I reawakened to the love in my writing life, I would discover… my words have more merit and meaning than I had originally believed. In fact, I haven’t believed deeply enough in eons. Or at least a long time. Eons, that’s a bit of hyperbole.

Isn’t it funny how a moment in time may feel like eons? It may feel like hyperbole too. Maybe we should write about love AS hyperbole. Maybe we should write about love being someone else drinking the yummilicous coffee I made for myself. Or stealing the chocolate bar (for myself) or… enter your weird quirk here.

“My sun sets to rise again.”

Robert Browning

Settling in, I think about Nutella sandwiches. I think about my slouchery as a mother. I think “What will my babies eat if I don’t map it out?”

= = =

There are so many distractions as I sit here and attempt to write for five minutes about awakening love for my writing process. I see a broom and want to sweep, I look at the clock and I want to assemble lunch for my children and get out into the money making flow “hurry it up hurry it up hurry it up!” I hear in my inner ear. Oh, Lord I can’t do it all – my anxiety reaches for my throat to shut my voice – my writing voice – down.

Five minutes. That’s all.

My fingers continue to move, on the keyboard focused.

Reawaken love for the process.

Let go of end result. Welcome bad or mediocre or lukewarm results. (Youch!) Yes, even lukewarm.

Awaken to the process being enough. This is so un-pilgrim-esqu: we are trained to insist upon results that are only in our favor. “There must be a something in order to continue I can’t just continue for a nothing that makes no sense.”

Writing this is not a nothing. Writing these words is definitely a something.

Process is worth all of the wonder and exhilaration of being on a best seller list or having twenty five people pay a thousand dollars to hear me speak.

My community is rising up to greet me and say “Bring your work forward with and for us” it is almost surreal, beloveds, almost surreal.”

Is it still less than five minutes?

I heard the coffee pot call me, the coffee pot that has been creating really tasty coffee lately.

I think of the squirrel and planning and play. And me. And love. And movement.

And applause. (My timer applauds when my time is up.) All that in five minutes.

= = =

Now it is your turn to take today’s prompt and write from it. You may write once or you may write several times.

“How may I awaken my love for the writing process?”

Remember to set your timer for five minutes and after your time is up, spend fifteen to thirty seconds writing what you are grateful for either from the writing experience or from your life in general.

The world is waiting for your words: let’s get them on the page now.

Be sure to follow me so you may continue to stay close to this sort of writing inspiration to keep your writing flowing and your life moving in the direction your heart seeks.

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

Facebooktwitterpinterest

The Power of Attention: Use It to Improve Your Writing Now

by

What is something you feel called to pay attention to, even if just for five or ten minutes or an afternoon or a day?

Let’s pay attention to how our words desire to flow for a sentence or a paragraph.

I’m going to pay attention to how my neck feels. I am going to pay attention for five minutes without concern about where this writing or this attention moves because in the world I inhabit, there is no wrong with this process, there is simply writing.

Inhale: There is no wrong or right, there is simply writing.

Exhale: No wrong, purely write. For five minutes. Begin.

‘I am going to pay attention to how my neck feels. I am going to sit here, at my desk and lower my head as if praying and feel how it is to.. and as I paid attention and relaxed my neck my hands fell away from the keyboard and I almost instantly fell asleep.

Perhaps that is why I tend to hold on so tight, because I don’t want to fall asleep.

How does one fall asleep and pay attention at the same time? Mothers of newborns do this all the time but then again we never seem to sleep really well then we just sort of… kind of sleep. Maybe paying attention serves as a reminder of how sleepy I am and how good it feels to rest.

I am going to pay attention to the good stuff in my notebooks that sit around, waiting for me to scoop them up and glean the goodies, like this one: I write to make peace with the things I cannot control.

I write to create textured, purple fabric in a world that often appears flat with grey or black or white only.

I write to experience a daily act of improvisation.

I write as though I am whispering into the ear of the one I love. ß timer says “stop – fingers off the keyboard)

When I re-read my words a week later I discovered with a giggle originally that final sentence read “I am whispering into the “war” of the one I love” perhaps because my subconscious felt the need to remind me I haven’t felt at peace with the person whose ear I have whispered to for many years now.

Perhaps paying attention includes making peace with open, compassionate diligence.

Are you ready for your turn?

Where will you focus your attention for a mere five minutes?

Set your timer for five minutes and write. Move your pencil, pen or fingers on the keyboard.

Write.

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world.  She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker,

Take a mini retreat in the canyon, perhaps… or in a local park.

performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.

 

Facebooktwitterpinterest