Julie Unplugged

This Day: How to Have a Satisfying Start after... a different start....

I realized this morning what my deal has been this week: you know, why I am feeling – right now – so wiped out. I sort of feel like I imagine how lava feels, once its cooled down but is still moving just not moving quickly. Molasses mind. It could be described as sticky, tenacious feeling of what was once completely destructive in a microwave-sense-of-quick now becoming dense and the opposite of mercurial.

Traveling solo and leaving the children behind is automatically a bit of a hot bed of emotion for me, but leaving the children behind and during that absence having a gas explosion in front of the house next door and the entire block evacuated does not add a warm and fuzzy icing on the cake. At all.

There were several other shocks to my system including Emma’s high school counselor waving an “expulsion” flag in front of my panicked eyes – and the red alert was like automatic rifles shooting through my gut and causing all sorts of interior, invisible to the eye damage.

My realization of this is critical and if I was Pollyanna, I would say “very exciting!” with perhaps a few extra exclamation points.

Instead, I will admit the realization and its partner, understanding and continued processing is what will get me into a better emotional space. Even as I write this I am smiling again: I am clearly being self coach, self therapist and self any other clinician who works with humans to help them actualize and improve.

1.       Stuff happens.

2.       Sometimes stuff piles on top of other stuff.

3.       The natural response differs between people and is different each time. If the stuff is piled upon other discombobulation, discomfort may leave a deeper mark. This isn’t a sign of somehow being weak, or bad, or unevolved, it is a natural part of being human.

4.       The best way to heal the stuff upon the stuff upon the stuff is whatever version of rest suits you. This may be exercise, this may be writing, this may be sex or other intimacy, this may be silence with friends, this may be prayer, this may be a combination of the above or others that best suit you.

5.       There is no magic key or jealously guarded secret that will make the progress “easier or better” for you.

6.       Forgive yourself for any responses you felt were “less than” who you know yourself to be.

7.       Repeat as needed.

8.       Instead, I will admit the realization and its partner, understanding and continued processing is what will get me into a better emotional space. Even as I write this I am smiling again: I am clearly being self coach, self therapist and self any other clinician who works with humans to help them actualize and improve.

9.       Instead, I will admit the realization and its partner, understanding and continued processing is what will get me into a better emotional space. Even as I write this I am smiling again: I am clearly being self coach, self therapist and self any other clinician who works with humans to help them actualize and improve.

Simply taking the time to write this down has cleared my system a bit. I feel happier, more content and definitely “on my way” in a way I haven’t felt since the flight from Houston to Bakersfield when I knew there had been an explosion and evacuation but didn’t know what would face me once I landed.

From the poem by Mary Jean Irion:

“Today: Let me learn from you, love you, savor you, bless you before you depart.”

It is satisfying to have this start.

* * * * *

This post is Number 28 of 30 and was inspired by the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Throughout the month I will be posting writing and creativity tips especially to make your writing (and your writing experience!) better.

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Together We Can Figure Out How to Say It: "Normal Day, Let Us Be..."

How do I say it?

The last week has been rather trying for me. Well, since last Monday, things have been trying for me.

Traveling across country and switching planes three times – two of which were smaller seating arrangements with grouchier people than I would like and finding out in Houston there had been an emergency evacuation due to a gas explosion in my Bakersfield neighborhood made for an emotionally treacherous end of the trip.

Once in Bakersfield, I was immediately thrust into my normal routines. And my normal routines plus secondary and tertiary activities along with spinning plates of other’s needs and desires almost all day long everyday.

I found a poem I love by Mary Jean Irion and have decided to play with an image and a line, daily, to remind me what is important… certainly much more important than getting worked up over continual plate spinning.

I hope you will read along to experience the entire poem and perhaps pray or set an intention to live the poem as it is posted.

How about it? Do you want to remember: “Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are.”

What else or what other ways would you complete this sentence or add to this sentence?

 

This post is Number 27 of 30 and was inspired by the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Throughout the month I will be posting writing and creativity tips especially to make your writing (and your writing experience!) better.

I'm so glad you are here!

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Curiosity Fills the Spirit: What do each of these images say to you?

“Perhaps this very instant is your time.”  ―Louise Bogan (Literary Granny 2013)

I didn’t particularly feel like sitting at my desk to write this morning. I have somersaulted into the post-traveling blues, my dogs are barking as if the loch ness monster flew over from Scotland and took up residence in our street and there are two PG & E staffers investigating the work that was done on our street this week after the explosion that caused our block to be evacuated as I was flying back to the West Coast on Monday.

This is not the ideal writing environment and I was not in a particularly favorable frame of mind.

Beth just let a shouting barkety bark escape her lips as if on cue.

If I wasn’t involved in a blog challenge right now I probably would have retreated onto the nearest bed and slept the day away, but because I am involved in a blog challenge, I stayed at the keyboard.

I looked at an image: a photo I took and then the same photo, edited.

That simple, five minute edit imbued the scene with an entirely different meaning.

Here: look –

Image Number One - Unedited. Look at it, closely and carefully.

Image #2 - What comes up for you when you look at the roots now. Has anything changed?

 

 What does the first image say to you?

What does the second image say to you?

How does this relate back to your day today?

Tomorrow – I will answer those questions here – I would love to know if you are joining me in this thought process. Comments, participation, waves to me as I drive down the street: each and all of these simple things make me happy.

  This post is Number 16 of 30 and was inspired by the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Throughout the month I will be posting writing and creativity tips especially to make your writing (and your writing experience!) better.

I'm so glad you are here!

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Literary Grannies Speak: Quotes from the Women Who Lived & Wrote Before Us

For an added bonus:  Read over the quotes once, looking for which one or two especially resonate with you. Write that quote or quotes on a piece of paper or index card and tape it above the place you write.

Tomorrow morning, early, take the quote and use it as a writing prompt.

This is one way you will give respect and homage to your Literary Grannies.

###

“Variety is the soul of pleasure.” Aphra Behn – Literary Granny 2013

“The human soul has need of security and also of risk. The fear of violence or of hunger or of any other extreme evil is a sickness of the soul. The boredom produced by a complete absence of risk is also a sickness of the soul.”--Simone Weil

“If you would reflect well and wisely, you would realize that those events you regard as personal misfortunes have served a useful purpose even in this worldly life, and indeed have worked for your betterment.”
Christine de Pizan (Literary Granny 2013)

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

"No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty." --George Eliot (born with the name Mary Ann Evans)

“Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.” Zora Neale Hurston (Literary Granny 2012)

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.--Katherine Mansfield

Meet Denise Levertov, Poet

“Perhaps this very instant is your time.”  ―Louise Bogan (Literary Granny 2013)

“Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.” Denise Levertov

“Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life.”  Kate Chopin (Literary Granny 2012)

“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.” May Sarton

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Watch this blog for profiles of Literary Grannies throughout the month of April here at Julie Unplugged. To check out the first few entries of the year, visit here.

  This post is Number 8 of 30 and was inspired by the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Throughout the month I will be posting writing and creativity tips especially to make your writing (and your writing experience!) better.

I'm so glad you are here!

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Sunday Creative Meditation: This is Me (and that is You) Writing (Creating)

This is me, writing at Dagny’s last Friday morning. I was rewarding myself for a productive time at the keyboard by the time 8:30 am rolled around I had published two blog posts, done research and got the kids successfully off to school. Kimberly and I had discussed meeting at this, my favorite spot, as a reward.

She was thinking just a time of friendly conversation. I was thinking of it as a reward.

You can see what I do there: I pile up books and notebooks and read snatches of essays and poems. I sketch, I practice writing, I sip tea or coffee and on this occasion, I used the lure of that slab of cinnamon coffee cake to insure my focus stayed in place for a respectable amount of time.

I was deep in creative mode when Kimberly appeared in front of me, bearing a teapot filled with roses from her garden. I think I said, “You’re here!” and I know my face did that wide eyed, lit up face when I saw her happily approach with her nature goodies. “I’m so glad you made it!”

She could only stay briefly, which I knew, but it is like those snippets of time with friends are worth huge swaths of time with acquaintences or people who just don’t live on the same wavelength as you do.

I was back in deep contemplative  mode when I heard someone tapping on the window. The girls eating at the tables on the sidewalk were pointing to Kimberly, who had her camera focused on me. She was pantomiming “write!” and when I finally got what she wanted, I started to write.

I dipped my toe back into the language stream and joy came out the other side.

It has lasted almost forty-eight hours now.

Alice Walker was with me as was Virginia Woolf and Natalie Goldberg popped into my sanctuary as well. I listened to a doula talking to a not-showing-yet pregnant couple. I watched the usual eclectic gang gather outside so they could smoke and socialize as well as drink coffee or tea or as the day marches forward, beer or wine.

I waved goodbye to Kimberly and smiled back into my words.

This is me, writing. And now that is YOU, creating. Take a deep breath and create for five minutes. Paint, sketch, write, meditate, call a beloved on the telephone, collage, sing, clap your hands, drum, gaze into the eyes of your cat.  

That is YOU, creating.

    This post is Number 7 of 30 and was inspired by the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Throughout the month I will be posting writing and creativity tips especially to make your writing (and your writing experience!) better.

I'm so glad you are here!

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F is for Fredrika Bremer: Our Literary Grannies from A-to-Z

I found another Literary Granny who astounds me and makes me wonder where she has been all my life. She never married nor had any children, but her impact on the social justice movements of her day through literature left her mark upon the world in grand ways.

Fredrika Bremer, a celebrity of the 19^th Century, was a Swedish author whose books were oftentimes published in English and German before her native Swedish. Her reach was wide and her impact was significant.

Her novels were written in a realist style with sketches of “everyday life.”  Her women characters did what the women in her world were doing. They expressed everyday joy and pain and made it interesting rather than leaping into the wildly romantic that was popular at the time. While she couldn’t speak directly about her beliefs, she did put a certain “writer’s code” into her work.

Even men read her novels, which she, at first, published anonymously, citing the philosophical questions posed within the well crafted prose.

What I noticed right away was Fredrika’s unbridled curiosity. She traveled to the United States in 1849 when she was nearing her fiftieth birthday and had gained popularity. She was single and she traveled alone which had special challenges in that time. While she was widely interviewed, her main purpose was to ask questions and to get a closer look at this “new” place which she thought might give her some answers about how to improve Europe.

She carried her sketchbook with her (as did yesterday's literary Granny, Ellen Emerson) and as she went different places, she had conversations with people – from the Native Americans in the north to the Southern Plantation owners and their slaves. She visited the Five Points district in New York to get a clearer image of the slums and the people who made this frightening neighborhood their home.

She visited prisons and attended meetings of Quakers and Shakers and sought out others from Sweden who had made the move to the United States. She was welcomed into people’s homes where she carefully sketched and documents her vivid impressions of the status of American culture, including the rights of omen.

In her homeland, she was passionate about the law of legal majority for unmarried women which would allow them to own property and manage their own money. Her novel, Hertha, opened dialogue on these topics as well as a formal higher education for women. It opened debate much like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin did here in the United States.

I giggled to realize the March sisters in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women were read from Fredrika’s work by their mother.  Interesting that Alcott’s books were some of the first “realist” novels in the United States.  It seems obvious she used Fredrika  for inspiration.

When Fredrika died of pneumonia she had worked hard and had not seen the full impact she had on social reforms which would come to fruition after her death.  She was eulogized by many, but quite notably was many years after her death by future Swedish Nobel Prize winner,  Selma Lagerlof, who was only a seven-year-old when “Miss Fredrika” died.

This post is a part of my series Our Literary Grannies from A t0 Z which was inspired by the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Find out more about the Challenge by  clicking here.

 

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot    

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Celebrating the Detours on the Way to Mastering those Jealously Guarded Secrets

“Mom, I think the dog vomited on the rug in the entryway.” 

I look up at fifteen-year-old Emma with a hopeless, “What are you talking about?” which forced me to take my eyes away from the lazy fun I was having visiting new blogs from new people who are so cool I want to be friends with them all. “Ok, thanks. I’ll be right there.”

It is another Saturday in the life of Mom, a job I love more than anything in the world, but really? The dog vomited? Can I put that on my updated resume or CRV, “Cleaner of animal vomit from the entryway rug?”

What about the endlessness of washing dishes?

Please don’t leave, dear reader, I won’t write anymore on those subjects but I just had to get it out. I had to say that before I continued down the path of some truly amazing writing (which in my first drafting I actually wrote “righting” on some very reflective and action oriented topic which will assist each person who reads this to have an amazing, abundant life made up of one dynamic jealously guarded secret after another!

Now, now, I know I have gone too far now.

I’ll get back to reality.

Sometimes you think you have this lazy day stretched in front of you. No one needs your direct supervision throughout the day and most everything is under control. We start thinking, “Hooray! I deserve to live in paradise!” which yes, we do, but what if paradise includes cleaning up the dog vomit in the entryway?

I would hate to not have my dogs in paradise and I would hate even more if my dog got sick in paradise and had to hold it back in order to keep me happy.

Sometimes you need to take detours in your writing to get to the “best stuff” and sometimes you have to take detours in your career, lifework or business because situations change.

Your best stuff will still be there when you come back just like the dog vomit will stay on the rug until I go to clean it up unless the magic house cleaning fairy comes to visit. I’ve been waiting for her most of my life without results so I doubt it will change now, no matter how long I procrastinate.  All those things you really want to do with your life will wait, patiently, when you address, once again, those endless dishes that need watching.

This morning Alice the cat wanted to keep me company as I wrote here, so I cleared off my desk to make her a spot. It was far too cluttered, anyway, it was about time I cleared it, so once I got over a very short whine fest, I made her space and surprisingly I felt immediately freer and grateful to have pets who love to hang out right beside me when I do my creative and lifework practices.

I suppose the moral of the story for each and all of us is, celebrate the detours and be with whatever shows up right under your nose. I know, this isn’t anything new, but I thought maybe you – like I – need a reminder from time to time, even if it is just an excuse to not get off your derriere and clean up… well… you know.

  # # # # #

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How to Stay the Course to Find Your Way Back to Writing-Love

This morning after Sam got on the school bus I randomly picked The Right to Write by Julia Cameron off the shelf. The first sentence I read stated, " 'I'm afraid' is always what stands between us and the page." 

Just last night I had a heart to heart conversation with a friend about fear: I wondered what was stopping me on a project. “It must be fear,” I said, but fear of what?”

Then Julia Cameron reminds me that fear stands between me and the page. Fear also stands between you and the page.

What would it be like to cut out the fear of simply showing up at the page now?

Let's each and all collectively choose to stay the course, even if that familiar friend fear pops up and tries to grab our pencils out of our hand or push our fingers from the keyboard.

You may grab onto our topic for writing and life today: Staying the Course. Sometimes during a wild and wooly weekend, getting back to the page feels like a monumental task. The thought of lifting my pencil, even lifting my fingers now to the keyboard feels so heavy. Spring break did it to me, too. It robbed me of my daily routines – or was it, I allowed the fear of losing my daily routines get in the way of my writing course.

One of my poet friends commented on my blog while I was away yesterday:

"I miss your poetry. Please join us today, our topic is love and romance." I scowled and quickly jotted a first draft:

She asked me to write of love and romance
and all I can think of is other poet's lines:

Gibran said, "Work is love made visible."
and Browning croons, "“Grow old with me,
the best is yet to be.” and I growl,
I pace, I grumble and pout and stammer
Mary Oliver taps on my shoulder, looks
me in the eye and soulfully states:
"“I have been in love more times than one,
thank the Lord."

I quote Pat Benatar lyrics,
"Love is a battlefield" and shout
J. Geils, "Love stinks" and my own,
"Love doesn't read my poetry
anyway so why bother, really?"

My socks are wet
I'm still wearing my jammies
and I am expected to
be inspiring to many in
just 30 minutes

What does love have to say about that?

I feel a sense of smiling between
my shoulder blades
I take a gulp of now cold coffee

I choose to stop grousing and
start writing
because more than once
my love has been found
first there, between and
among the words
even becoming
the love, itself

I may not know love like
Robert and Elizabeth
or Rumi and Shams or
Mary and Molly or
those tricky kids
Romeo and Juliet AND

I do have word-love
I'll write to that...

Will you write to word-love?

To carry you through the weekend, I created some prompts for you. Take a moment to read through them now. Copy them into a document or write them in your notebook. Let the prompts settle into a cozy place in your subconscious, working quietly as you go about your day.

Later, come back and write from one (or more of the prompts) free flow writing style. Write for ten minutes and then stop. Take a breath and walk away. Go about your everyday business. Come back later or tomorrow scoop another and write until you have "written it all out.”

If you continue this process over the weekend, You will deepen both your awareness and your devotion to writing and word-love.  I am convinced of it.

Prompts:

Today I will choose to stay the course because...

If I told the truth about staying the course so that I could fulfill my writing dreams, I would say...

One way I will stay the course with my writing today is...

I will speak and write what is rumbling under my skin: I am scared when I think of staying the course and even though I don't want to say it, I will say...

I will tenaciously, stubbornly, passionately stay the course by doing....

I devote myself to staying the course with my writing and one way I will show that devotion to the world looks like.....(and then write from your other senses, too. Smells like, sounds like, tastes like, feels like…)

Can you feel the sense of smiling and joy right there, between your shoulder blades? Maybe you don't yet, but stay the course with your writing and my bet is soon you will be smiling with your entire being. 

Stay on your writing course simply because through it, you gain confidence. Through confidence, your passion builds. Through word-love, the world is a better place.

This post is Number 5 of 30 and was inspired by the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Throughout the month I will be posting writing and creativity tips especially to make your writing (and your writing experience!) better.

I'm so glad you are here!

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot    

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Where Will Your Creative Process Take You Today?

Never try to be in control of which direction your creative process wants you to go....

One of the assignments I have given myself this April is to “curate” my vast body of work and then sculpt them into several different… somethings. I am thinking books to start, probably with Kindle or other ebook methods to begin.

 

I have tons of writing lessons I created, how-to’s on writing, essays on writing and I even take photos about… writing.

This morning I pulled out a lesson I wrote three years ago to see if I could morph it into a new blog post as a part of my curation process. I decided as I wrote along here, telling you about my process, I would go one step further and give the “proper” definition of “curate”.

I was completely surprised at what I found.

I was expecting “curate” as in “curator” at an art gallery. I have been involved with enough art shows and even curated one of my own, so I know from firsthand experience a curator does this: “Select, organize, and look after the items in (a collection or exhibition).” Naturally I’ll be doing some clean up, revision and restoration along the way, dusting off cobwebs and other things curators usually do.

What I didn’t realize was the second definition of “curate” which actually fits as well when you think of it for a moment longer than your knee takes to jerk up to your chest. Curate = “A member of the clergy engaged as assistant to a vicar, rector, or parish priest.”

Just like that I have a new mindset about what I do when I am editing, revising and sculpting my work into specific forms like teleclasses, e-classes, books, stand alone lessons, collections of essays, how-to or info products. No longer is this drudgery and I am required to shove my creative mind into the dungeon. Now it is a soulful process where a different kind of touch is required, someone to come along that whirling dervish creative side and teach her about stillness.

I wonder if you can tell from reading what I just wrote that this blog post was supposed to be about Rainer Rilke’s love for the questions combined with blind contour drawing?

That blog post will have to wait for later.

This “a-ha” blog post that is begging to be shared with you is what wants to be born NOW.

One of the biggest challenges my writing students have is they get stuck on revision. They remember the red slash marks of their teachers in the past – they obviously were not curators – and they see it as something bad, scary and most likely with a negative or hurtful outcome. What if instead we begin to approach this “second part of the process” as sacred, holy and gentle.

My mind is immediately seeing a second side of me, I am wearing my robe and a floral headpiece of some sort. No, wait – I am wearing lots of lace… sort of loose flowing yet tight around the bodice. I look at my ethereal best and I take gentle care of these words the world is waiting to hear.

That feels much better than angry red slash marks, doesn’t it?

Yes. In April, I will be curating and curator of my life work.

I feel softer, lighter and I have an enormous yet peaceful smile on my face.

Tomorrow, perhaps – we will meet up with Rilke and Blind Contour Drawing, but today is our day to simply sit here and consider how our writing would improve if we gracefully put on our curator costume before we revise or edit. Instead of red slash marks and frustration with your whirling dervish creative self, minister gently with her – showing her both her brilliance “as is” and her brighter brilliance with a bit of polish and panache.

How does this shift how you approach the second stage of your writing process?

This post is Number 4 of 30 and was inspired by the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Throughout the month I will be posting writing tips especially to make your writing (and your writing experience!) better.

I'm so glad you are here!

 

Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: @JulieJordanScot    

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How to Crack Open Your Creative Inspiration Now -

What are your methods for creating inspiration?

 You may think inspiration comes from the outside in, a lightning bolt of an idea that waits in the heavens and then – Ka Pow! Our brilliance shines in all its glorious magnificence!

What if inspiration lived completely within you and all it would take for you to write (paint, photograph, sing, stitch, whatever your chosen medium) is to tap into its power at any time?

Today, a story of how I do exactly that using photography and writing.

 My hope is you will learn and feel moved to try something similar for yourself.

 My friend, Victor, and I were in the midst of a conversation about motivation and inspiration yesterday. We were talking about feeling it and not feeling it and what our responses were, either way.

I told him about my recent journey from Bakersfield to Corona del Mar and back again in one day for my Uncle’s funeral. It felt different, that day, because I didn’t feel compelled at all to pull my notebook from my backpack and catalog my experience with words. “It was different,” I noted without further reflection or judgment.

I added, almost absently, “I did take a lot of photos, though.”

I took a quiet breath. “It was something, taking photos.”  My words sounded almost like an apology.

I turned the conversational attention to my friend.

“What about you?” I asked. “What have you photographed lately?”

 “Not a thing,” he answered. “Nothing has interested me.”

I coughed, gagged and sputtered. I heard some version of a vocalized “What?!” burst from deep in my lungs.

 He asked me a question, “What am I going to photograph here in Podunk USA?”

 I was speechless, absolutely speechless. Victor has taught me so much about making forward progress no matter where I am, my dear friend who right now was saying there is nothing to photograph in his version of Podunk USA which is very similar to my version of Podunk USA.

 Victor’s lack of inspiration right where he was, Podunk or not, shocked me right into wordlessness.

I decided to take a slightly different angle to our conversation.

 “Remember how you have complimented me for having a great eye in my photos?” I asked him.

 He nodded yes. I asked another question.

“How do you suppose I developed what you describe as ‘a great eye’?”

 There was a pause.

 “You take a lot of pictures.” Victor responded.

 “Yes, I take a lot of pictures. Every day I take pictures. Here, in Bakersfield  in MY Podunk, USA”

 I paused again. “Every day.”

 Every day I take photos of aspects of life I find interesting because I choose to find the images right in front of me interesting. Yes, I choose to be interested in objects which may not be notable to anyone else but me.

I want to live a fully engaged life so I choose to be engaged with whatever is in front of me. It is so simple.

That’s what living a creative lifestyle is about, it is about an invitation to become more fully engaged in your life.

 What will you choose to be interested in today?

During the train trip to attend my Uncle’s funeral, I chose to be interested architectural elements. I was drawn to cornices, archways, doorways, the tiles in benches and walls. I choose to be interested in changing perspectives, in looking from the undersides, in noticing how the changing light changes how I see and experience things.

I chose to get right up against things, to let my lense get microscopically close to a subject.

 I chose to engage wonder about the bark on the palm tree in my front yard and then turn to engage in the wonder of the bark on the palm tree in my backyard, which is different than the bark on the front palm. I choose to engage wonder with the spider web, the leaves on the mulberry tree, the window sill the spider web is woven upon, the movement of the sun throughout the day and throughout the seasons.

 

It is in these moments when I notice the beauty around me. It looks no different than when it did before only now I am in a relationship with it. I have conscious acted in order to  change “uninteresting” to “very interesting in my version of Podunk, USA.

This is when inspiration cracks open inside of me. I allow myself to be devoted to seeing in a new way without being attached to “being inspired” – believing I need inspiration in order to crack open creativity and instead, allow inspiration to be cracked open through the devoted actions I take.

 

My devoted, conscious action invites inspiration to crack open within me.

 I invited inspiration to come in and as always, inspiration didn’t fail me.

Remember this message: I didn’t wait for inspiration to be there. Instead, I invited it to join me and consciously acted in a space and attitude of wonder, of gratitude, of engagement.

You don’t have to wait for inspiration, either. You can choose to crack it open inside of you by engaging with life right in front of you, right there, right now.

Inspiration is right there, exactly where you are, exactly as you are in an infinite number of forms and images.

 Look around your space right now, with a renewed sense of wonder.

 What do you see? Smell? Feel? Hope? Wish?

 Take what you see, smell, feel, hope, wish and wrap it up in a creative adventure with words or photos or song or prayer or sketch.

Crack yourself open to the inspiration all around you right now.

This post is Number three  of 30 and was inspired by the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Throughout the month I will be posting writing tips especially to make your writing (and your writing experience!) better.

I'm so glad you are here!

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