haiku – Creative Life Midwife

Read Until You Arrive at the PS

July 25, 2023 by jjscreativelifemidwife

This is how deadlines work: we draw a line in the mud, or in the sand or on our foreheads.

We put our heads down and move toward that line.

On the day I wrote this haiku it was possibly the last thing I wanted to do. I have a lot going on in my spirit, I had a lot of responsibilities of leadership and my energy was sapped due to grieving and sadness and not feeling “up to it.”

Instead of avoiding it, I did my best.

I allowed myself to be where I was, without judgment.

I moved forward, with love.

While in process, it looked like the blurry screen, the not quite there words. When I called it finished -well,

here’s how it turned out:

Haiku 13/37

They’re still dancing

Taming from yesterday’s storm

blossoms still open

I may morph this into a tanka. It may take a variety of forms. For right now, right here, this is just right.

Plantain lilies in the church/manse yard, gentle yet harsh teachers.

Coming upon the intimate scene, I chose to honor them and didn’t get as close as I might have usually gotten. Maybe tomorrow, maybe not.

This haiku included study, contemplation, research and presence.

I will remember these lilies, as they were and as they are. Yes. Will return tomorrow.

Is anything about this haiku or what I wrote particularly earth shattering?

No. It is none of those things.

AND it is earth shattering in that I stayed the course. I shared my progress. I was authentically, whole-heart-and-soul present.

It is so easy to walk away.

The next time you have the thought “Why bother” in one of its many variations, I hope you will remember this moment of time: showing up, in that moment’s best. Not worrying about comparing that moment’s best to anyone else’s best.

PS: This is also why I use the word “Guidelines” instead of “Deadlines.” Guidelines are full of life and possibilities. Deadlines remind us of the losses that loom. I would rather focus on possibilities, even within loss. Guidelines do that for me.

A blurry computer screen and a blurry notebook: sometimes getting to clarity is a journey from deadlines to guidelines and beyond.

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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To Do For Them (and) To Do For Me: Your Higher Self Agrees, You Are Important, too

October 28, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Woman is making a heart in the mirror, remembering SHE is important, too. Our higher self wants us to know this!

Early this morning I sat on my bed with my phone and a couple choices to make in my hand. Samuel got off work early. He texted me at 6:30 to ask if I could come pick him up. Immediately I raced into high gear.

One Surprise Change Can Change Everything, Instantly

I shape my morning routines around his schedule.

With my car headed North on the Freeway, I noted my speed at getting out the door when my kid needed me versus when I am “only doing this for me.”

When the choice is on his behalf I’m quick, I’m focused, I’m energized and precise. “Hurry up, he is waiting! It is cold out there.”

When it is only for me, I’m sluggish, distracted sprinkled with a dash of apathetic. “As long as I have an hour for walking, its all ok.”

Haiku to the Rescue

I took a photo of an intersection for my morning haiku, a daily practice of mindfulness and creative practice. It wasn’t the most inspired imagery I have shot in the last three-hundred-plus consecutive days, but it told the story.

An intersection in Bakersfield, California inspired a haiku, one of 377 written by Julie JordanScott in 2019/2020

Haiku 307/377 — October 27, 2020

Sitting at the crossroads

dream mirrors reality

your new day is here

The intersection told me the choice of urgency for another person’s needs and sluggishness for my own isn’t cast in stone. The choice is up to me: my desires, my ambitions, my hopes are as significant as every other person on the planet – even my children and world leaders.

Now it is up to me to take this new awareness and practice it.

Remember to call upon your Higher Self for advice

After I dropped Samuel at home, I hesitated. I could just go inside, too, and forget about the walk I had planned. I wondered what my higher self would suggest before I made the best choice.

I took a walk on different than usual streets. I stayed out the same length of time – because walking is for my health and for raising my spirit, which is important for me in all the roles I play.

I’ve been a Mom for a long time so naturally I go on high gear when I think my child needs me no matter what their age is. It is time for ME to remember my value partially because I want to continue to be their Mommy for a long time to come.

Questions for Contemplation & Journaling

How well do you treat yourself in comparison to others?

What can you do to shift back into a more equitable approach?

+ = + = + = + = + =

Julie JordanScott lives in Bakersfield, California in a house too small for quarantine life. She leads discussions on Zoom and is polishing her most recent memoir and some poetry for soon-to-be publication. If you would like her to speak to your group over ZOOM until travel is available again, she would be happy to talk to you about that OR maybe you are looking for a slightly quirky, very open hearted, compassionate and tender Creative Life Coach. She would love to speak with you soon.

Moving Ahead During Uncertain Times with MicroGoals

September 2, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Micro-goals will help you be more successful. This blog post shows you how.

How do you want to feel about your life – your work, physical health, role as a parent of adult children living at home, role as a community member, and content planning at the end of the next two weeks?

Easily stated, I want to feel better than I feel right now. I want to feel more satisfied with this situation, even if we are still being asked to stay at home and wear our masks in public.

What are Micro Goals: aren’t they just goals?

Micro-goals are classified as a certain type of goal. They amplify the present moment and reward you for being productive in a way that suits your personality and aligns with your vision and values. They are simple and short term rather than complex and long term. One of the keys to success with micro-goals is with their length: you may quickly experience success and naturally feel compelled to continue with that goal or leverage that micro-goal into a bigger part of your plan or vision.

Micro Goals work because they offer fast results and easy success. Check marks in boxes make us happy.

Examples of Micro Goals:

This morning I worked on my monthly walking goal. I am using steps to measure success and building up to an end-of-January goal: a fourteen mile walk from Ojai to Ventura.

I have recently restructured this goal because I am speeding up my training, so this micro goal will be increased every two weeks.

Each day I will aim to meet my standard step goal. If I walk 1,000 steps more, I will reach my “Stretch” goal. If I walk 2,000 steps more, I will reach my “Damn Girl you are a superstar” goal.

I have made an ordinary short term goal fun, humorous, and in chunks is time limited. I have a reward at the end I find ridiculously fui and right now in September, slightly unreachable.

Today, I am helping to motivate myself to continue with other daily tasks as I stride my way into my two-week-goals so that I may more likely reach my next level in my walking goals.

Other micro goals may be trying meatless Mondays throughout the month of September, learning the basics of a musical instrument, writing an instagram post, a story and a reel every day for two weeks. Short, fun, fast success or not. You get to try it out (beyond the “first time”) and decide to continue or modify your goal based on results and data.

I have also found there are often times barriers because I just don’t feel like taking the extra steps, making the additional phone calls or emails, cleaning that drawer out today, fill in your task you don’t want to do here.

A women looks frustrated: she doesn't believe she has to do this task. She doesn't want to do it! Everything is NOT do-able!

For those times when you just aren’t “feeling it” – and yes, they happen more than we might think during “these uncertain times.”

After I finished my morning walking today, I took note of the extra benefits to walking that don’t relate directly to the number of steps I have taken. I wrote this write into the notes section of my phone:

Because I walked farther than I wanted to, the rewards were plentiful:

I smelled freshly mown grass (a favorite smell)

2. I heard a birdsong I had never heard

3. I got closer to the end result I’m aiming for

4. I built more self trust

5. I feel better about myself

6. I was able to say good morning to a man working in the park, cleaning trash. I imagine he is often “invisible” as he works, I wanted him to be seen and to receive a happy, grateful smile.

7. I prayed for children past, present and future who will play here.

8. I walked on a baseball/softball field, something I haven’t done in years. The simplicity of this made me feel grateful and content.

9. I hugged a new-to-me tree.

10. When I get home I will write, I will publish, I will scoop up dangling threads, I will choose to be happy.

Trying on a goal is like trying on shoes and clothes and rearranging the furniture. Micro-goals are one way to do this successfully

A-ha moment, in the writing!

I just realized while I didn’t know it at the time, writing an occasional list of celebration when I achieve my goals unexpectedly is a great idea!

Also, when I got home, I did do those tasks. I finished some graphics, I posted to two of my facebook groups, I am now finishing up this blog post. And I have been cheerful the whole time, even making plans with my sometimes reclusive son for this afternoon.

End Result: I felt incredibly accomplished and ready for the next item on my agenda. I have gotten more and more accomplished today – this morning – than I did all day yesterday.

Creating a Successful Micro Goals is as easy as starting where you are:

One simple way to consider what to use as a micro goal, I like to “look out over the future” and ask what I want to see in the next week or two weeks. Then I reverse engineer my way back to the present – and this is where many of my micro goals come into being.

I want to be able to look back at my calendar and say “I wrote my haiku every day, I marketed my business on these social media platforms every day, I made a list of ways to generate income with the skills I have right now.”

A row of palm trees at sunrise is one of the haiku photos I have taken during 2020. Poetry and dailiness has made a big difference for me with Micro Goals.

I started getting serious about the effectiveness of micro goals when I started writing haiku every day. It is a micro goal because the daily task is so small. The length of time, however, isn’t micro at all.

I started writing haiku again and used it as my first goal in a long time because I asked myself this question, which I ask you to ask yourself as well.

What is it that used to make me feel better in the past?

What short amount of time and energy activity has been known to lift you from sadness to joy or at least “an improvement”?

You can go back as far as childhood: recently my daughter has started jump roping again and is having a blast at it – something that brought her alive as a child will help her reach her health goals as an adult AND she is still having a blast!

What do you like to do that will support how you want to feel in two weeks that utilizes what you have at your disposal where you are right now?

Take your time before you answer – and when you do, it would be great for you to join the Bridge to the New Year facebook group where we discuss goals and micro goals all year long as you create your most satisfying, creative life.

ignup–>

Julie JordanScott, the Creative Life Midwife, is a writer, a poet performer, a Creativity Coach, A Social Media Whiz and a Mother of three. One of her greatest joys include loving people into their greatness they just aren’t quite able to realize yet.

Julie is also one of the Founders of Bridge to the New Year. Join us now in in Bridge to the New Year to reflect, connect, intend and take passionate action to create a truly remarkable rest of 2021

What Writing Poetry Every Morning at Sunrise Taught Me

July 31, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Before the end of 2019, I created a goal uniquely mine with one goal: to “have something to do every day that would help me feel better.” I remembered the past, when I would write haiku and post them on facebook before the start of the workday, one friend of mine enjoyed reading them and I enjoyed writing them. The number 377 ties me to writing one haiku – a Japanese form of poetry noted for being short and to the point.

I knew if I made it a difficult goal, I might run the risk of not completing it. I gave myself space to fail AND I knew if I paid attention and made sure I had a guideline to write before a certain time of day, I would have a greater likelihood of success.

In early July I had the idea to do a “sub” goal or a micro-goal. I created a specific intention within the initial one. This time, I was going to write a haiku poem every day at sunrise for a month.

I didn’t expect the potent impact this simple practice had on my life, especially since I had already been writing daily haiku for more than six months, everyday. This new tweak to the goal definitely put the entire project onto a higher playing field.

Micro-goals rock: Small, short-term and do-able goals build confidence and make the process of accomplishment even more fun.
Having accountability via public proclamation is both slightly intimidating and brings about an extra zap of love, hope and optimism. I used my facebook page initially. Now I share on other social media platforms and text to specific friends. During the last week of the month, I also share daily gratitude lists and invite others to share their gratitude lists, too.

Haiku 192 – July 2, 2020

Sunrise at the Panorama Bluffs in Bakersfield, California.

trees hold a secret

golden laces weave their leaves

lone bunny watches

Watching the first light of day is one of the most optimistic acts I can imagine during this particular point of our history. It is something I can trust.
Falling in love with sunrise is akin to falling in love with life, falling in love with the place I live, and falling in love with the people who show up and engage with my posts.

July 14, 2020 Haiku 204/377

A mallard duck family swims in the canal off Brundage Lane in Bakersfield at Sunrise

Urban pastoral

Mallard mama quacks fiercely

distant palm stands tall

Grace is a dear friend who embraces me, everytime
Doing unconventional things will attract attention and odd conversations.
Standing on a creative ledge is inspiring even if we are simply doing it for fun

Haiku 208/377 July 18, 2020

Loco Weed (moonblossoms) blooming at Sunrise beside the Calloway bridge in Southwest Bakersfield

poison loco weed

feels the magnetic charm’s call

time for you to sleep

When there is no boss to create goals or tasks for you, you may become the best task master you ever imagined.
My senses are improved because of daily attention and fine tuning.

Haiku 213/377 – July 23, 2020

A pumpjack (oil well) in North Bakersfield at sunrise.

silent old pump jack

sees another day begin

Skoal can on gravel

When we are prone to documenting how terrible things are don’t get up and witness the sunrise every day.
Witnessing sunrise is a potent non-chemical anti-depressant. Because I am well aware of the current news cycle in order to be an informed citizen, this sunrise haiku practice has kept me grounded and present as an optimistic realist.

Haiku 220/377 July 30, 2020

Organic citrus

north of Edison Highway

proud palm trees stand guard

There are two days left for this micro-goal, even though July is almost over. After this, I will be writing seven days of Coffee Haiku, inspired by a friend I made on Instagram. After that, I may return to sunrise because it feels so good to be outside when it is still cool during a hot Bakersfield summer.

Which of these photos and haiku poems resonates with you most?

Woman writing on the front porch of a brick home, — Write wherever you find yourself.

Julie is also one of the Founders of Bridge to the New Year. Join us now in mid-2020 in #Refresh2020 to reflect, connect, intend and taking passionate action to create a truly remarkable rest of 2020.

I don’t want to, but I do it anyway. Everyday.

July 24, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

Most mornings I wake up and think I ought to just sleep in. I can skip a day: just this time no one will notice. It’s a pandemic, no one is paying attention, no one really cares.

Then something lifts me up and out of bed and says “Get up, get out, create.” or as I said a long time ago, “Show up. Look up. Translate.”

When I codified my plan to do something daily that made me feel better – created guidelines for my personal creative practice – since I stuck with what I codified my life experienced has changed radically for the better.

Today I realized how my seeing has become so much more alert since I started my daily morning haiku practice. I think even more so since I chose to write sunrise haiku.

This slight change in schedule – on purpose – has allowed me into each day as it begins. It feels like an initiation into a society who are all in on a secret the people who are asleep all around us don’t have a chance to get.

Just as the sunrises at Lake Ming in Bakersfield. Ducks in the lake swim as the sky brightens.

Seriously: today I sat at a table at Lake Ming and had my phone in its tripod and the rays of sunrise made visible through the camera reached to me as I watched and wrote, as if it was saying thank you.

People get caught up – I get caught up – in anger and frustration and a sense of incredulity when I witness even the slightest taste of the horrors swirling around us as of late.

The sunrise reaching out to me – in gratitude – and my “new seeing” is a feeling of communion I haven’t felt since holding my newborns or when I was a little girl in the back seat of our turquoise country squire watching in awe as I believed the stars were actually following me, specifically. That’s what it felt like on that magical evening so long ago.

This simple act of writing haiku every day has helped me to reconnect with everyday miracles and wonder. It wasn’t an instant awareness with the first few haiku, but now – a day doesn’t go by without a surprise.

Julie JordanScott typing a love poem on the edge of a foothill of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Julie is also one of the Founders of Bridge to the New Year. Join us now in 2020 in #Refresh2020 to reflect, connect, intend and taking passionate action to create a truly remarkable rest of 2020. Click the graphic below to join the Private Facebook Group to join the conversation!

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Let’s Explore Trust: How to Grow in Trust Every Day

July 17, 2020 by jjscreativelifemidwife

A sunrise photo with flowers and the title "Growing in Trust, one day at a time."

“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don’t know how to start talking about trust. How can I talk about something I know so little about, if I am completely honest?

At the root or core of my life experience, no single person has been 100% trustworthy. I have not been able to trust myself. While I trust God in the long run, it seems unreasonable to trust God in some of this day-to-day when so many horrific things take place day after-day-after-day. (please note, this is not written to be a theological discussion and in fact, this is an exercise in vulnerability which I believe God appreciates.)

Perhaps this is why I have been so focused on writing haiku for the last two hundred plus days. I can trust one simple action – and now, since July 2, I have been “writing sunrise haiku” because I trust the sun to rise, each and every day.

I can trust that.

I can look up the time of day it will move above the horizon and every day – whether the clouds cover it or it is clear as a whistle, the light comes.

This I trust.

Light through a tree at sunrise with the Maya Angelou quote, "Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time."

I have trusted myself to scribble seventeen syllables each morning as well: not because my boss told me if I didn’t I would be in trouble. I wrote haiku because I thought it would be fun, not because a doctor told me to do so. I contemplated at least one present moment every day because I knew it was good for my spirit and maybe even for the spirit of others – not because of any oath or promise or contract other than the one I made with myself.

For the last 206 days I have proven to myself in this one instance I am trustworthy.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe reminded me this morning, “As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”

This morning I shared my sunrise photo and haiku on my facebook page in the same way I have been doing for all these days. Within the first moments, people were enjoying it – and receiving peace simply by looking at the photo and reading the words.

I am slowly gaining trust in myself again and my actions are in alignment with this trust.

When we are open to explore and be authentic with our responses to questions such as these, we will grow in ways unmeasurable. Yes, we will truly know what it is to live.

Note: This essay began as a free-flow writing exercise and as a result has had minimal editing. Sometimes trusting the raw word-flow is what is most important.

Gifts of Forgiveness + Haiku, Breath, Questions & Moving Your Pencil Across the Page

December 24, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

In revisiting my life narrative, I am revisiting all experiences without weighing in on judgment in the process. I found this from 2011 when seeking writing tips to share via social media.

Instead, I found this gift to pass along to you, now.

I woke up this morning feeling fear rumbling in the middle of my chest. My heart was racing just enough to tell me “I am afraid. I should be afraid, I should be worried, I should – I should- I should.”

I rolled over to look out the window at the soft morning light.

There was nothing in that light telling me to be afraid.

I got up and poured myself some ice water, some vitamins and stood, quietly, breathing
in the silence as I shusssshhhhed my heart internally.

There was nothing in the coolness of the water telling me to be afraid, to be worried.

I felt my feet as I walked back to lie down for a few more moments before beginning my day.

I allowed the pillows to support my neck and head. I completely felt the sheets against my skin, the soft breeze of the fan offering up refreshment at the beginning of what will be another more than warm day.

This is what forgiveness feels like: support,cool air, hushes like a gentle mommy as she taps our back as we try to sleep, fitfully. She breathes with us, reminding us everything is fine, truly, everything including us is just fine.

I am an expert at forgiving others.

I tend to let go and forgive long before the other person has even thought to ask for it. Sometimes I think I forgive too easily, before I have given the true meaning of grace its due.

The one person I am the least likely to forgive is myself.

This morning, I started understanding self-forgiveness on a deeper level.

My primary teacher/life coach/personal development guru for today’s integration lesson was Louisa
May Alcott. Many of us only know Louisa May Alcott as the author of the classic tale, “Little Women”.
She wrote and lived so much more than this one book that made her a household name.
She wrote, “We all make mistakes. It takes many experiences to shape a life. Try again.”
in her short story, “Transcendentalist Wild Oats”

She knew and lived forgiveness more than a hundred years ago. Reading one short story of hers gave me more insights than any personal development book written in this century or the last has given me.

I thought I had nothing to write today.

I started with haiku:

waiting for coffee ~
book opened to page ninety ~
eye glasses on desk

Re-read an essay I wrote in January and gleaned this sentence to tweet:

“Today I will continue to give space for my heart’s wisdom to rise above the tyranny of the “must do now” list.”

From there I tiptoed to this quote from Miss Alcott I had carefully copied yesterday and remembered my earliest moments from today. I decided they were share-worthy.

“We all make mistakes. It takes many experiences to shape a life. Try again.”

What forgiveness are you waiting to offer yourself?

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.

Does it Matter What Causes Your Block or Simply Get Over It? #5for5BrainDump

August 25, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife

For months – or over a year, rather, my neighbors have gotten in the way of my writing on my porch. It is a favored space for me to sit and write in the morning or broadcast or drink coffee and find peace while rocking in the oversized red rocking chair. The new neighbors with their questionable “friends” and other “accessories” have kept me inside, until lately.

For months – since May, I haven’t slept in my Virginia Woolf room I started creating well over a year ago. When Emma came home, I gave it to her as a temporary space until we juggled bedrooms and I took up residence on the couch. Yesterday, I slept beside the window and walk up this morning in the grey light, happy to find myself under the breeze from the gentle ceiling fan and the carefully picked out art showing me Virginia’s room.

It felt so good until my mind started scattering marbles all over the floor and I lost the deep peace – for a moment or twelve.

“One step at a time, one thing at a time, one solution at a time” are some of my favorite watch words lately to bring me back into presence.

They are soothing, another word which has become a frequent visitor in my lexicon.

The applause says time is up, which I’ll accept.

I did also want to honor my age old tradition of writing haiku on Friday. I sat on my porch this morning and wrote, even with my less than optimal neighbors bent over cars and having folks in and out before 7 am.

Haiku writing is healing: a simple poetry form, a sacred prayer form as well, here is a song suite from this morning that was born when I invited myself to say what needed and wanted to be written.

We heal one haiku at a time

What I want to say

Yogurt calms rumbles

Ativan calms inner howls

Wait: tide will go out….

fake it til you make it

Sunrise through elm tree

Red rocking chair and coffee

Alta Vista peace

Worst strategy:

Please don’t nag at me

Each contact leaves a blister

Longer time to heal –

Best strategy

I’m thinking of you –

Let’s create this together

Your work helps the world

Prompt: Haiku is simply a seventeen syllable poem, a short work of art.

Some say it is like an inhalation and an exhalation.

I often start my haiku with what is in front of me, which can be seen in “fake it til you make it” above.

The worst strategy and best strategy are microcosm statements of what works well – and doesn’t work well – in communication with me. I realize it is helpful to be able to express these thoughts to people, especially when I am experiencing depression.

So start with something in front of you and write it in this micropoem container.

______/ ________ / ________/ ______/______

______/ ________ / ________/ ______/______/_____/______

______/ ________ / ________/ ______/______

Next, if you are an entrepreneur, see how you might fit your business story in a tiny haiku. For the artful entrepreneur, combining headline writing and copywriting with haiku adds another layer of creative play.

Set your timer for five minutes – and write as many haiku as you’re able!

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.