Julie Unplugged

Goals and Dreams 101

“Nothing happens unless first we dream.”

-Carl Sandburg

There is an exercise I believe in: I learned it when I was working for the County of Kern and was able to attend an all day woman’s seminar. Mark Victor Hansen was the speaker. I knew him from “Chicken Soup for the Soul” but had never heard him speak.

 

He was a man who held my respect in his lapel pocket. I knew he knew how to make his dreams come true.

 

He had taken an idea no one believed in except for him and his partner and leveraged that into a platform which enables him to do anything he wants to do. His “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series was turned down repeatedly until it finally found a home with the then tiny “Health Communications” publishing company. The series has a bevy of bestsellers now and the brand-name is known the world over.

 

At that woman’s conference more than ten years ago, Mark Victor Hansen told us to do two things:

 

First, make a list of 100 life goals. He told us they needed to be written down, on a paper – a nice long list.

 

This concept became the subject of an article I wrote back in 2002 which is still being shared on the internet, today. When I read it I blush a little about my writing style but am grateful for the earnestness with which I wrote the piece.

 

Here is what it said:

 

“Was this speaker stark raving mad? One hundred goals? He thought I could come up with 100 goals for my life?

The speaker, Mark Victor Hansen, compiled the hugely successful Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books with Co-Author Jack Canfield. He challenged the assembled throng at the Women's Business Conference to brainstorm 100 life goals.

He encouraged us to work with a partner with whom we would swap lists. Together we would encourage each other to develop our list. We would hold each other accountable. We would help each other eventually reach these 100 life goals.

Seeing that he was where he was, and I was where I was, I decided to take his advice! How many best sellers does Mark Victor Hansen have anyway? Exactly my point! He was a best selling writer, highly paid motivational speaker, darn good dresser too! And me? I was an employee of local government who read a lot of inspiring books. The kids in my Sunday School class were motivated by my speaking. That was certainly worth something. My wardrobe? Usually bought on sale, or at the end of the season on clearance.

If Mark Victor Hansen got where he was by writing 100 goals? Then I figured it would not hurt to try! My co-worker and I buddied up to walk together through the process.

The next day I sat at my keyboard. At first I thought I would have difficulty in thinking up goals. Soon, though, I was on a roll. My goals were as diverse as "Have lunch with a friend one time weekly" to "Host a radio talk show" to "travel to Europe".

I approached my co-worker to share my list with her. I also wanted to do my part as her buddy. I knew I needed to encourage her to write her own 100 goals. She read through my list, saying "Great! Oh, and you wrote .Learn French twice!' ". With that, she went back to the tasks on her desk.

"Ummmmm.....how is your list coming, buddy?" I tried to sound as positive as I could on this one. Never sound accusatory towards your buddy, I thought.

She looked out her window and replied, "My 100 goals are to get up tomorrow and the next 100 days!" She laughed at her humor. Me? I didn't understand.

I laughed on the outside but on the inside I was groaning.

I quit my job eighteen months later. One of my goals, fulfilled.

I think my former secretary is still working for the County.

Then again, her dream in 5 years is to still be working in local government. It is perfectly respectable. There is nothing at all wrong with that goal.

It is just not something that I could be particularly passionate about. Not something that I would be especially inspired by.

So where does that leave you, today?

Can you think of your 100 goals? Where would you like to be in 5 years? If you had a magic wand and your life could look like anything, what would I see when looking at you? What would it feel like to live that ideal life? What would others think of your life? Would you inspire people? Annoy people? Learn from people?

In other words, what do you really want to do with your life?

Start slow if you think you can not possibly think of 100 goals. Take out a piece of paper or open a new document on your word processor. Go for ten goals at first. No set order of preference, just let your mind go. Let the ideas and thoughts flow.

You may find you need to write more than ten goals as your ideas start moving less like a trickle and more like a deluge. If you run into a roadblock? Stop working. Walk away. Save the goals you have written. Promise yourself that you will come back later.

And then do exactly that - Come back later. Challenge yourself to finish your list of 100 goals.”

Back to the present: October, 2009. I have hosted my own radio show. My social life is ridiculously active and I usually share more than one meal with friends every week. My writing has appeared in one of Mark Victor Hansen’s Books (Chicken Soup for the Soul of America.) I have appeared in several movies, I have had “another child” who is now eight-years-old. I have achieved many of those early goals and have created new lists of goals, dreams, aims and achievements. It is like Diane Fotopoulis says, “Even if I don't reach all my goals, I've gone higher than I would have if I hadn't set any.”

Today, I am starting a new list of 100. I know the power of dreaming – of reaching – of aiming high and beginning the process without being attached to the outcomes.

The Julie Jordan Scott I was in 2002 reminds me, “100 Goals. A method for uncovering what you really want. 100 Goals. A way to find out what is stored in your heart. 100 Goals. The beginning of your future. 100 Goals!”

Why not start your new list of 100 Goals with me today? I am calling November New Beginnings: Season of Dreams Come True. You may start your new dreams and your continuing dreams with this very simple exercise.

100 Goals. The beginning of your future, the life of your dreams. 100 Goals.

© 2009 - Julie Jordan Scott

 

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Photo - Haiku Collage: When Family Returns to Family

My family hasn't made it a practice to just get together for the sake of togetherness. For my children and me, we are faced with the unfortunate reality of geography - many of my relatives live close to one another so they see each other much more regularly than we see any of the rest of them.

There have been years, at times, without contact. Life is busy. Without intention, we would never get together. I have two brothers I literally can not recall our last conversations.

In the past couple of years, our only reason for connection has been at funerals until finally we elected to change that this weekend. A small, hearty (and hardy) group collected for a reunion. This morning, I wrote a collection of haiku to accompany just a smidgeon of the photos which were taken.

This just in: because the kids and I did not attend the dinner portion of the evening - you should have seen how wet and sandy Samuel was - I was elected to organize next year's event. Makes me giggle...

Here is what I have written so far - thanks to my brother, Jim, who was also documenting the day through photos.

Back to the tide pools
Be-ribboned hair toddled here
Was it yesterday?

Last seen in tire phase

Now grace fills from sole to scalp

 -- was she ever round?

Finger tips connect

Grounded with faces apart

hear the pulses match

 

Tree root racing boys

Competitive blood flows through

Uncle and Nephew

 

Finally has love

His hand smooths her long, brown hair

Shouted wordlessness

Genetic match mates

Black and white, bottom to top

Who wrote the memo?

"I see him moving!"

Sea Lion stretches his fin -

Is that him, moving?

 

Woo hoo! He did it!

Time for us to happy dance!

Learn from your Cousin!

 
See, Listen, Notice

Engage in conversation 

Presence reported

 

I Can't Wait to See What Happens Next

 I woke up to a startling revelation today.

On this day in 1994, I started the worst job of my life. Well, the job itself wasn’t so bad, but the culture my employer created for me, as an employer – there was the part that was misery-making.

The contrast is compelling, considering less than forty-eight hours ago a life-long dream came true for me.

 

Thursday night my children, friends and I gathered underneath the marquis at the Fox Theater in Downtown Bakersfield. It bore the movie title “Zombie High” and the definitive word “Premiere”. It just so happens, I am part of the cast, not as “Zombie number 23” but as the Zombie Queen herself.

 

It sounds silly and ridiculous – it is both. It is also a huge confirmation for me.

My young friend, Anthony, has been walking around telling everyone about his own personal “Movie star”, Julie.  My friend Caroline said, “The vibe in that place was amazing!” and I would have to agree. That’s what happens when collective dreams come true. The energy rises to levels not known before, it is energy newly created. 

Dreams come true smell like fresh spring blossoms, early morning air and reunions with beloved friends.

 

My daughters and I were dressed up for the occasion and felt the glitz and glamour from the soles of our feet to the tops of our heads. This morning I saw Katherine had written on facebook, “I am having a blast at My Mom’s premiere. I feel so pretty!” and “My Mom knows so many people,” which I am guessing she wrote when I ‘worked the crowd’ hugging and hobnobbing and accepting congratulations from many faces which were unfamiliar to her.

It has been a topsy-turvy week of disappointments followed by breakthroughs followed by disappointments followed by new awareness.

Earlier this week, I wrote a poem to share with the group at “ReadWritePoem.Org”, my favorite on-line poetry community. I took my Artist’s Statement from the Burn the Witch art show here in Bakersfield, cut it into small chunks, put the small chunks into a bowl and randomly drew the words from the bowl.

 

It felt like I was collaborating with the Divine, which when I reflect back, I was – both in the initial writing of the statement and in this rewriting. It is only in the second writing experience I was open enough to “get it.” When I stood in front of my published artist’s statement last week, I cried at the rawness of the words I wrote. How could I publicly make such truthful statements, such confessions that would make most people slink away for fear my words would infect them?

The dream-about-to-come-true right on my horizon fell off my radar. I forgot what was right in front of me.

I like to think I am an aware person, but like everyone else – I wouldn’t be truthful if I said I remember the “what is in front of me” all the time, especially when it feels like my children are having their dreams ripped away from them or that whatever happens is beyond my control.

What I can say about myself is I continually pick up my foot and put it down. I consistently take action in the direction I want to go, even when it appears unfavorable consequences outweigh any good that is taking form.

It is in that action that magic happens. It is in the action right in the face of what some people may label “not so good” that I realize is simply experience that the potent, celebratory dreams come true.

Dreams like the one I experienced Thursday night with my daughters by my side.

Sadness was washed away in seconds.

On this day in 2009, I am attending my first family reunion ever – and it is another, albeit less splashy, dream come true.  Lots of family members have opted out at the last moment which makes me sad, mostly for my sister, who planned this event. I could get frustrated and opt-out myself. Instead, I am simply grateful for the effort and for the people who will be connecting with my children on a deeper level.

I woke up to a startling revelation today: life is a dream come true. I am devoted to bringing each and all of them to life. I am devoted to experience all of those “dreams long on a shelf.”

I am devoted, too, to dreaming with you.

I can’t wait to see what happens next.

 

= = =

 

Yesterday I created a Dreams Do Come True program, with uniquely crafted programs you may experience according to what fits best for you - all at phenomenal values.  Check it out and Register now

 

Your Dreams are Here - Inject them with Passion Now

 

Dreams do come true.

I am not talking about a Disney Family Movie dream coming true or the countless urban legend stories of dreams-come-true-or-did they?

I am talking about real life, living and breathing dreams coming true.

I know this subject intimately. Why? Last night one of my dreams came true, a long ago dream spoken by a little girl in elementary school in New Jersey: a sweet little wide-eyed and naïve child who was entirely devoted to the notion, “I can do anything and be anything I want to be!”

I bet there was a little boy or little girl inside of you like that at one point in your life.

Where do these little ones inside us go?

Last night – October 22, 2009 – my wide-eyed little girl’s vision became a reality.

It is sad to say I almost forgot her wistful insistence. It is sad to say she was placed, sort of off kilter on the shelf for far longer than she would have felt comfortable.

It is remarkable to say she came down from that shelf, that she brought her long-ago-spoken dream into fruition now.

I had some “dreams along the way” come to fruition, too.

It is almost the ten-year-anniversary of leaving employment with the County of Kern, a job I took strictly due to a “should do this, gotta do this, have no choice but do this” mentality. When I look back across the last ten years I see a sea of accomplishment and life lessons I never would have achieved had I stuck with a sleepy, in denial conventional lifestyle I lived for far too long.

For another woman, that exact life style may be her dream come true, but I knew from the very beginning it wasn’t my dream come true. Yet – I stayed there, unhappy and either vaguely or painfully unsatisfied until I broke free and started this, my life adventure.

In a way, that breaking free was the first phase of bringing the long-ago Julie’s dream into today’s reality.

It started with the breaking free from vaguely uncomfortable, “is this what I really want?” and “is this really what my life is about?” line of questioning which began to spark an inner dialogue, sometimes so deep within me I didn’t hear (or perhaps refused to hear) any part of it.

It makes me wonder this:

Do you hear yourself asking the same questions I asked? “Is this what I really want?” and “Is this really what my life is about?”

My life adventure of the past ten years has included my own journey, and what charges me up the most has never been the stuff I have done. That is great, I love it, I revel in it, I delight in those moments when I achieve something cool or experience my own dream come true.

AND….

I am even more fired up when I come alongside other people and inspire, coach, collaborate, come alongside and stick with them through bringing their own dreams come true.

What is stopping you?

Is it the beginning that is stopping you?

Remember: Dreams do come true.

Is it belief that you can’t? I had that belief for far too long.

Remember: Dreams do come true.

Is it the “But I don’t know how to?” I had that belief, also. My story includes  staying asleep for far too long. It took the Universe sending me a sign that was unavoidably strong. It shook me, rattled me, forced me awake, practically shouting, “HEY! Julie, don’t you realize it yet, Dreams do come true…INCLUDING yours!”

Did you hear that?

Dreams do come true…INCLUDING your dream.

Come, follow me on an adventure in your dreams coming true… 

 

Dreams do come true…INCLUDING yours! I have created three programs which will bring your dreams to fruition before the beginning of the New Year. Imagine - Know - Believe it.

 

I want to come alongside you and empower you to live your dreams as I have lived mine.

 

Program Option #1 - Your Dreams Come True Writing Intensive Camp

 

Program Option #2 - 4 Week Teleclass: Live Your Adventure in Your Dreams and Life

 

Program Option #3 - Dreams Do Come True Daily Activation Sessions

 

 

Dreams Do Come True - Especially Yours.

 

= = =

 

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Zombie High - World Premiere October 22, 2009

This note was posted by Hester Wagner, one of my dear friends who is a part of Inclusion Films:

Think “Thriller” meets “Breakfast Club.” This new short feature film from participants of the Kern Film Workshop is filled with great camp moments, lots of laughs and LOTS of zombies! Filmed around Bakersfield, you’ll recognize many local landmarks and local actors. The Kern Film Workshop is a collaborative effort between the Arts Council of Kern, the Kern Regional Center, and Joey Travolta’s Inclusion Films. The workshop provides vocational training and enterprise development to film makers with developmental disabilities. The world premiere of Zombie High promises to be an entertaining evening. Support a great community effort and independent movie making at its best! Come meet the team who made it all happen: the filmmakers, the workshop leaders, and the actors (see if you can recognize them non-zombied). Doors open at 6:00PM.

Free.

Call the Bakersfield Fox Theater for more information at (661) 324-1369

Creative Soul Catalyst - in Downtown Bakersfield on a Random Friday Afternoon

I approached the wrought iron table, feeling the rush of my feet propel me forward with the intensity of longing-meeting-friendship-visit about to take place. I greeted Coryn and a man I didn’t recognize as I caught my breath, looked about, and started lifting two clipboards with blank paper: folded, ready and waiting, from my oversized bag.

“Here, I brought these if you want to watercolor,” I said, reaching deeper in my splattered bag for a box of pencils. I smiled. I turned without further explanation and quickly allowed the wooshing energy to propel me to the counter where a large, Zambien Zing waited to be ordered. Emma caught up to me as I walked through the door.

She seemed delighted to be involved with me as I scampered around Dagny’s, which she mostly knew via inference, not by direct contact. My green tea craving and Emma’s chocolate chip craving satisfied, we walked together towards our table with Coryn and watercolor accessories. I hugged and chatted with Max and Tom along the way, people who just so happened to have crossed path with the call of Dagny’s, too, at exactly the same I was being propelled forward, onward and upward.

I arrived back at the table to discover Coryn and the watercolor pencils had become acquainted in my absence. A smile bubbled off my face and words tumbled off my mouth before I knew what I was saying, “You are using them!” I nearly shouted, so happy someone took my offering of a blank page, some tools for adding color to the blank page and then, took action.

Coryn responded to my simple invitation, just like that.

It reminds me of the words of Pablo Picasso, “Art washes away form the soul the dust of everyday life.”

I can’t remember who arrived next, but the afternoon turned into something of a parade of people I love: Billie Joe came by, Barbara and Anthony stopped in, Jill coincidentally picked up a cup of coffee and a handful of conversation. After the briefest of phone calls, Hester found herself within a block of us and brought herself and her cat by our table-turned-art-workshop for a visit.

She, also, picked up the water color pencils and blank paper and started to create. A tree caught her fancy, so she began to recreate it. Her style was decidedly different than Coryn’s, but watching it unfold was equally delightful.

Dagny’s tends to attract creative, spontaneous people, but it isn’t every day you see people sitting at one of the tables, drawing. You do see computers propped up, the occasional reader or writer and naturally, heated conversation, but until that day, I had not seen watercolor.

Those drawing and painting were washing away the dust of the day. I especially loved that when Hester got tired of the process she declared it done, anyway, and named it “Incomplete” with a flourish and posed for a photo for me because naturally I was busily visually documenting each moment as it unfolded.

 

Hester's art, unfinished AND finished. Who decides what is finished, anyway?

 

Picasso wrote of the dust falling from the soul through art and I would agree: it is the process of creating art, it is the process and practice of creating your moment in the moment-that-is which washes the dust away, not what might be seen as a "conventionally high quality artistic value".

 

I would rather have the dust washed from my soul than be swallowed up by relentless worry about whether or not my scratches on the page are any good or not.

 

Complete or unfinished, breath taking or just-a-first-draft - all of it serves as a soul catalyst, each movement of the brush on the page, the pencil on the paper, the word of conversation shared - all of it valuable, worthy of attention and capable of creating life changing shifts for both the experiencer and the witness-of-the-moment.

Julie's ezine, the Daily Passion Activator, includes an Essay and a Poetry every week day - inspiration delivered directly into your email box - Why not Subscribe today? It's free.

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Daily Passion Activator - October 19 - Other Rules for the Road

By Julie Jordan Scott

 

On page fifty-five of my copy of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way there is an almost circular burn mark alongside #7 “Rules for the Road.”

 

It is mirrored on the other side of the page in what looks like a California-fire-season-sunset. It is scarred and hazy, beautiful and slightly sad.

 

My finger traces its edges, wondering how the burn happened since I have no conscious recollection of it, even though this is the sixth time I am working through this very same book. This book has been used and reused, picked up and thrown across the room, scribbled in, both cursed and giggled over.

 

Repeating this adventure in reading is like that as it is like life.

 

We don’t remember every detail, all the time. I am surprised by the nuts-and-bolts I have forgotten from this book. I wonder what I have forgotten of my life, those moments I declared “unforgettable” have long since wandered away from any conscious recollection.

 

The past few days were spent with my mother in Dana Point. It is a place we love and a place we both lived – me, for only three years and her, for more than twenty.

 

What I loved most about our shared time during this visit were all the firsts I offered my mother. It started immediately, when she picked me up near the train station in San Juan Capistrano. I thought she would arrive several hours after me, but instead I saw Mom walking towards me only fifteen minutes after me.

 

My view out the window of this particular Starbucks was grand: I could watch the entrance to the colorful Mission San Juan Capistrano. I could sip my coffee while I checked my email or wrote essays. I was planning a stint of at least an hour or two.

 

I was delighted to see my mother, though, and offered her some coffee. She agreed as long as I ordered it. She had never been to Starbucks and knew even less about the Venti or Tall or Grandes and shots and frappuchinos than I know.

 

I got her a Pikes Place Drip, no room for anything except for coffee, please. I disconnected my computer and we sat and talked, having no idea our initial connection would set the tone for the rest of our time together.

 

We ate Mahi Mahi tacos – soft, on whatever tortillas to choose, said Mom. She didn’t know anything about choosing tortillas and was trusting me that Mahi Mahi was as good as good could be. Guacamole was her primary interest, anyway, and she thought sea-food was a good thing for her health so why not?

 

Mom drank a Pina Colada. She visited a historic neighborhood in San Juan Capistrano. One early evening she watched the sun setting over the Pacific ocean. It wasn’t that she happened to be there when the sunset happened, she completely connected with it. She experienced the sunset.

 

I had made a rather bold statement the day before when we invited my brother to have dinner with us that night, not realizing it might go against my mother’s grain. I said, “I only have one rule for you having dinner with us, Jim, and that is that you will come with us to watch the sunset at the jetty. It is something I do every time I come to Dana Point – so if you want to do dinner, you need to do the sunset, too.”

 

The next day, Mom said, “You better call Jim at about 4:30 to make sure he wants to do this whole ‘sunset at the jetty thing’ because he might just want to meet us at the restaurant.”

 

I didn’t realize at that moment it wasn’t Jim she was concerned about, it was herself. Remembering back, I still hold my favorite moment from that evening close, almost as if it was in my hand in a forever image.

 

It was an expression on my mothers face and the way her voice sounded. I can hear  my seventy-seven-year-old mother’s voice, slightly awe-filled, saying “I have never seen it like that before.”

 

She has been experiencing the setting sun for 365 days a year for the past seventy-seven years, yet one night in October, 2009, she was clear and crisp and precise and her heart was engaged in the experience of the sun’s descent.

 

© 2009

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The Truth Lives in the Question

By Julie Jordan Scott

 

I thought the question was almost as ridiculous as asking, “Do I really need to take another breath?” Disdain dripped from my pen as my fingers tapped my response onto the keyboard.

 

I have been working through questions from a website called lyved.com. The questions always evoke something in me: anger, frustration, curiosity, and when I am particularly blessed, new awareness.

 

Today’s question felt redundant, perhaps because it is something I ask myself each day. I thought, “Do I need to explore this more than I do now?”

 

Something happened, though, between the time when I started writing about an hour and a half ago and the time I sat at the computer to write something “more official” to share with the world. No, it isn’t about having you, my readers, my audience, enter into my stream of thought, it is more like the question and my slightly arrogant approach to it settled into my gut and started working me from inside my body.

 

I realized my disdain and arrogance weren’t the true thing. My practice and my ongoing love for the question is the true thing. My curiosity was linking the space in between, the “what is up with being disdainful about it?”

 

The question:

 

What am I grateful for?

 

I have journal entry after journal entry on this topic. On the 43things.com website alone I have made, up to today, 885 entries of gratitude. This, from someone who used to sneer down her nose at “gratitude losers” – people I thought were “in denial of reality pollyannas”… until I started practicing gratitude myself.

 

Obviously I am a fan of gratitude and expressing gratitude as a sacred practice – so why was this simple, aligned with my heart question causing my hair on my arms and the back of my neck to stand up, like a cat facing off with the neighborhood bull dog?

 

What am I grateful for?

 

I could shout out a list right now. Easy as pie. I wrote mine earlier today after all.  I answered the question right at the top of the morning, like I do each and every day. See? Here they are, my at-least-five-gratitudes:

 

I am grateful today is Passion Activator Friday. Haven't hosted one for a long time, so I am looking forward to a highly productive, enjoyable day. Woot Woot!

 

I am grateful to hear initial raves about "How I Learned to Drive"... when the creative director came to our Wednesday rehearsal (which none of us thought was that great!)

 

I am grateful for my cast mates. We have fallen into a groove of mutual support and respect. It feels so good! There are only five of us, so it helps that we are all strong, committed and focused.

 

I am grateful for the poetry challenges at ReadWritePoetry.org. It helps with my October goal PLUS it gives me a focus. All those poetic people showing up and commenting positively helps a lot, too.

 

I am grateful for phone calls with CMore, especially now that he is away...(but from the sounds of our phone call last night, he will be back today and not-so-very-late after all.)

 

I am grateful for Barbara, who helped me out with Sam yesterday.

 

I am grateful for the scent of applesauce cooking... so peaceful all day yesterday. I am grateful.

 

What am I grateful for?

 

The more I review my relationship with the question, the clearer the “what is up” comes.

 

First, there is a sense of worry and self judgment. “Am I doing this gratitude thing right? I must not be doing it right if I get so angry about being asked it here, by an inanimate web page created for personal growth, not personal tantrumming.

 

Second, there is a sense of “I am so above these questions”. That same sense of arrogance that bothers me about some of the authors of books many of my friends read. I don’t like to read them because their tone, their “I am such a guru and all of you reading this are such schlocks.” No, those authors don’t say that at all – but I manage to shove my opinion of their attitude – which I make up, by the way, into their work.

 

Ouch.

 

Third, there is a sense of “Why the heck am I wasting my time doing this when I could be decluttering or making phone calls or working on my business plan or doing some real writing?” my biggest area of lack or limited thinking. I have this belief I don’t have enough time – it has a tendency to take over and choke me, like vines climbing on a beautiful brick house, my warped time-beliefs become like a cloak and the matching dagger is my perceived inability to squelch it.

 

The truth is there is no “right” way to do gratitude beyond keeping it sacred. The point is well taken that if I am writing my list solely to check it off my planner, I am missing the point. Gratitude lists, sharing what we are grateful for, should be akin to prayer. Responding to this question reminded me – which is a very good thing.

 

The truth is there is not a hierarchy of questions which we answer and my favorite is probably akin to newborn question asking: “What is up with that?” A mom asks her newborn, “What is up with the tears, sweet heart?” and checks the diaper, burps the baby, perhaps brings her to the breast for a feeding.

 

“What am I grateful for?” may be answered in the cradle, in the graduate school, in the back alley and in the board room, all the same. It is a question that lives in the infinite

and also, perhaps in the rungs of a ladder.

 

The question is, perhaps, one pathway away from cultural hierarchy. It provides shifts that suddenly make the hierarchy unnecessary.

 

This is potent.

 

The truth is staying grounded in what I know eliminates any perceived time crunch. Staying in focus and aligned with what I know to be true settles fills me with the purple, gold and green of abundant thinking. That is the truth.

 

“What am I grateful for” helps me remember so much. It helps me live so much.

 

It is your turn to ask the question:

 

“What am I grateful for”

 

Can you see me smiling, in anticipation of your response?

 

I am grateful. So grateful.

 

 

 

Julie's ezine, the Daily Passion Activator, includes an Essay and a Poetry every week day - inspiration delivered directly into your email box - Why not Subscribe today? It's free.

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Celebrate Good Times, Come On! (with an Audio-Writing-Play Experience)

Do any of you remember this Kool and the Gang song or is it just me?

(I will be embarassed if it is just me!)

We are entering a time of hearty, passionate celebration here at Julie Unplugged, Daily Passion Activator and all our abundant other places of presence... writing groups, teleclasses, poetry groups... it is time to toss our hats in the air and throw a festive party of parties...

I could say this celebration is due to the more than 707 Blog Posts here at Julie Unplugged but it is more than that....

Because hey, I want to celebrate YOU celebrating YOU.

Please don't let my wacky energy today confuse you. Stay here... smile and laugh along with me, please. It is so much more fun in community.

To kick off this time of Celebration - I created a Writing Play Moment - with a splash of Soulfulness and Meditation mixed in - for you to experience and enjoy. You may even invite your friends to join in.

There is no such thing as "Party Crashers" here.

Let's start the celebration... Woo hoo!

Please share your writing here, in the comment section, too - if you are comfortable with that..or send me an email - juliejordanscott at hotmail.com.

 

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Remembering the Moment

By Julie Jordan Scott

 

I have been shaking my fist at playwright Paula Vogel on a regular basis lately.

 

I agreed to portray the Female Greek Chorus in her Pulitzer Prize winning play, “How I Learned to Drive” at the Empty Space theater, but I didn’t realize how  much the experience would play me.

 

I knew the barest essentials of the script.

 

What I didn’t know were the nuances in the words or the juxtapositions of my characterizations and the scenes within the play. During the rehearsal process, scenes get cut up and often times aren’t “put down”, side-by-side, until close to the end of the process, like this one.

 

There are two scenes that run back to back that are particularly difficult to me. The first time I experienced them, I broke in the middle of rehearsal and had to stop for a moment. I was crying – deep, sobbing crying – and it wasn’t in character, either. It was me, as Julie, standing on stage with the entire cast there. I sobbed and couldn’t speak.

 

I waved my fist inside my belly at Ms. Vogel then.

 

It was the first of many times I did the same thing.

 

Then there was the rehearsal when I heard a Mother-Daughter dialogue echo.

 

Amy reported she heard me inhale, sharply. “I knew you had found something,” she said. Yes, I found another reason to raise my fist at Ms. Vogel, Amy.

 

I love theatre that gives the audience something to think about when the show is over. I love theatre that gives audiences a glimpse into the lives of characters and then gives a glimpse back into their own lives.

 

“I bet we will have a lot of audience members who will be remembering…”.. the moment they learned to drive.

 

How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel opens on Friday, October 9, 2009 at 8 pm at the Empty Space Theatre at 706 Oak Street in Bakersfield, California.

It runs Friday and Saturday nights at 8 PM through October 24 with one Sunday Matinee at 2 pm on October 18. Admission is free with donations gratefully accepted.