Mistakes are Not the Enemy (and More Discoveries) via the Simple Act of the Creative Process

I am participating in an art challenge in June and July - the Index Card a Day Challenge from Daisy Yellow.com.

The Day one prompt: Chevron... and I made a mistake right away which lead me into a potent theme for contemplative writing.

"Mistakes help us remember. Mistakes are not the enemy."

"Mistakes are our greatest teachers."

My entire life was built upon a mistake. An error. A birth control failure.

A diaphragm malfunction caused my conception.

I'm not whining, I'm actually grateful. When I was a young teen I used to say, "Well, God must've really wanted me to be born if he caused that mistake to take place!"

That is practiced optimism, which has been a saving grace for me over and over again. I forget sometimes, until I make a goofy mistake with a crayon and choose to keep it as a part of my first tiny work of art for this challenge.

Mistakes are not the enemy, they are among our dearest friends, helping us discover the path were meant to be on all along. If we don’t make mistakes, we miss out. We’ve all heard the repetitive cliché of Thomas Alva Edison’s 9,999 mistakes on the way to the light bulb. We’ve all heard the repetitive cliché of Babe Ruth’s strike outs.

What's more important is how you and I handle our mistakes.

What's more important is what we make our mistakes mean and how we make our mistakes impact the rest of our lives.

We may choose practiced optimism. We may choose anger. We may choose to give up or to hold on, weasel-like, and keep our eye on the course.

I'll be posting once or twice a week about my progress and what I am learning along the way. As always, I will be combining my art with intuition and discovery.

This challenge is yours for the taking. Would you like to participate? Visit Daisy Yellow Arts. I'll see you here and maybe there!

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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 Spring, 2015 and beyond.

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.

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

Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 08:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Letter to Me: Stop the Bleed.

My five minute "brain dump" took a while to begin this morning. The result may be confusing - me writing a letter to myself - but eventually it worked. Kind of, sort of, it is what it is.

Dear Me,

We opened up a blank document an hour ago to write for five minutes and then we walked away. Poured a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee. We briefly considered what to write about - thought about Walt sleeping at my feet, sleeping beside my bed (he just snorted, must know I’m writing about him.) We thought about Meister Eckhart and Dag Hammerskjold. We thought about the people populating our thoughts and experiences.

We thought about our body, bleeding. Still. This is ridiculous, ineffective and irrelevant. Stop the bleed, for goodness sakes. Why today? Why when I am supposed to be going to one of my favorite natural spaces where I won’t go if my uterus is shedding blood it doesn’t need to build up anymore because there clearly aren’t going to be any more babies springing from my womb.

We are a tenacious lot - the Jordan Clan - but seriously, this monthly bleed did its thing well when it made sense to exist. The withholding of the blood cradled my five babies during their time in the consecutively shared womb space. Only three survived outside my body’s nursery. I’ve dealt with the losses and will continue to do so.

I used to think I would grieve when menopause came upon me but now I am jealous when my friends tell me the change has long come and gone. I’ve been bleeding for forty two years, people. Forty two years. I had breaks when pregnant and nursing so I could honestly subtract a few years from that mix but post pregnancy there was always the lochia and that was horrid, too.

After Marlena died, I created my hope chest ritual. Every month when I had a menses I didn’t want, I would buy something for the baby who would eventually be born. I told my children about this last week. “So I got all the things from the hope chest,” Katherine reasoned.

“No, actually you all did. You all got something.”

I gave the girls some vintage baby clothes I bought at an estate sale as I told the story. “For your hope chest.” The baby hope chest. I never had a marriage hope chest, but oh, how I always wanted babies.

Maybe it is the latent hope and deep desire for babies that my body hears and continues to respond to even now.

Looks like my topic found us.

Thank you, me, for always helping us find the way.

With Love,

Me

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This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

Set a timer and write for 5 minutes.
Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. This is writing in the raw.
Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
Link back to the AllThingsFadra.com post (feel free to use the SOC Sunday graphic).
Add your post below (be sure to use the permalink to your post, not your blog’s URL; and only NEW posts please).
Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

============================================

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 Spring, 2015 and beyond.

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.

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

Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 08:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

For All That Has Been, Thanks! A Week's Worth of Thank You Notes

From last Saturday morning to this Saturday morning, there are lots of reasons for Thank you notes. I was glad to find this Thank You Note link-up to share my Thank you's with you today.

First - THANK YOU for hearing my prayers! And for reminding me I have the time and fortitude to respond mindfully when life throws curve balls. Sometimes that means taking time to photograph shopping carts - and recognizing the presence of all that is good and right even when very frightened by others actions in my life or crises in the world around me.

Reflections and Prayer - Listening and Hearing

Second - Thank you, beloved daughters! For putting up with my whims and passions and even, at times, enjoying them.

Thank you for putting up with my quirky passions and whims

My girls chased the sunset with me. Love these quintessential Kern County spots.

Third - THANK YOU! to the bus driver who gave my permission to board the bus to document Samuel’s last ever school bus morning ride! This turned out to be a great shot, better than if I had planned to rush onto the bus (like none of the "normal" Moms do! Yes, he rolled his eyes right before he plunked into his seat and looked out the window).

Fourth - THANK YOU to my unconventional graduates - for being an inspiration to me and staying true to who you are, all the time.

Finally - I have been deeply in love with diplomat/philosopher Dag Hammerskjold for years. With the ups and downs of this week: the tears, the laughter, the contemplative moments, I remember this wisdom in these words and in this image, taken nearly six years ago.

It's your turn!

Join the Thank You Note Link up!

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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 Spring, 2015 and beyond. 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.

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

Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!) Follow on Instagram

Posted at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Mixed Media to the Rescue: How the Absence of Language Moves Language Forward

It seems like an unlikely conundrum for a lover of words. When I am working for a long time with language on a specific problem, I find myself most able to gain insights when I step away from language and work from a non-language approach. I have been working on re-branding my creative life coach and soul growth business and I bumped into a language barrier. I moved to mixed media and the layers - and images - and vintage book pages - and layers - and images - and colors - started to do their magic and speak to me differently than if I had just sat at my desk and attempted to “figure it all out”.

Mixed media works differently.

Mistakes lead to the choice to add more colors or layers of paint or

paper or ink.

Found language lifts words which speak to the language blocks differently. It isn’t a collision of words or ideas, it is a periscope or a tunnel into a breakthrough that wasn’t previously there.

This helped me immeasurably. I have moved forward in ways I never could have without taking the time away from the written word and language and into the beyond language space. Have you tried mixed media? If you haven't, why not try something new? This June and July I will be participating in the Daisy Yellow Index Card a day art challenge. I encourage you to consider it.

This post is being linked to Creative Every Day, the website and inspiring space for artists to share their creative work. I am grateful for the years of focus Leah Piken Kolidas generously offers to all of us.

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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 Spring, 2015 and beyond. 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.

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

Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!) Follow on Instagram

Posted at 09:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

An Even Better than Just Right Fit: Five Minutes, the Keyboard & Me

I've had a week of challenges, processing, cutting through the bullsh*t and now, finally, breakthroughs into what will be.

My five minute "brain dump" became much more than that today. I enjoy it completely when this happens. How, for you out there, reading - it only takes five minutes to write and a few minutes more to post something. This is your chance to let go and let it flow. Join us! The link is under the image... head over there after you read my post -- :-)

I start to write my five minutes without my timer ticking because I don’t know precisely where my phone is and the thought that I don’t know where my phone is actually feels pretty darned good. I don’t need it at 6:48 a.m. on a Sunday morning. I didn’t need it for much of yesterday. I actually slept with the darned thing because I didn’t get a chance to connect with a friend of mine before I fell asleep in the middle of a ripe with cliché Hallmark movie (hooray for Saturday night!) and I hoped at some point for that distinctive text sound to awaken me just enough to call back and say goodnight.

It did and I did.

Hours later sitting with my coffee cup on the table next to me, a robin singing outside my window and my fingers typing words that don’t have any necessary destination is a delightful way to begin my Sunday.

It’s been a tough week, after all. A week when I met mortality face-to-face and was told once again, “No need to fear” which was a relief yet also weirdly discombobulating. The aftershock shocked me, quite frankly.

Maybe it was just the “cancer prone” comment by the doctor who needs to take a remedial course in bedside manner.

I look up and out the window. Through my lace curtains the leaves on the trees look remarkably green and new. Our unseasonable rain seems to have opened nature’s Crayola box. No watering allowed until today, rationing is alive and well in the central valley.

The light from the sun - that daily flood of gold - meets the leaves and sings of promise and hope in this week’s aftermath. It explains it so much better than language possibly could. My brain dump becomes more of a pillow, a quilt, a quiet moment looking up at the sky and sharing what the clouds look like.

Now there’s a just right fit. Until the train whistle, far off, joins the robin’s song. An even better just right fit.

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This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

Set a timer and write for 5 minutes.
Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. This is writing in the raw.
Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
Link back to the AllThingsFadra.com post (feel free to use the SOC Sunday graphic).
Add your post below (be sure to use the permalink to your post, not your blog’s URL; and only NEW posts please).
Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

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 Spring, 2015 and beyond.

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.

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

Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 07:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Writing Exercise Pushes Toward Playfulness - and May Change Your Life, too.

Quest toward Writing Fun (even if one must write badly along the way.)

King Arthur’s knights quested after the Holy Grail. I, however, perpetually quest for ways to make writing fun. I even posted a request for “writing fun suggestions” at the Writing Camp with JJS Facebook page recently.

In a few spare moments on a Saturday night I decided to visit twitter’s #amwriting feed. I came upon a post with a headline very hype-y but obviously it made me click.

Hyperbole is much alive in this title “This Fun Creative Writing Exercise Will Change Your Life”.

Seriously? One writing exercise will change my life?

I can’t support that wildly reaching proclamation but the article did, help me give birth to a poem draft. I haven’t written as much poetry lately and it made me sad. Writing a quick draft - badly on purpose - felt exceptional.

Does this change my life?

Maybe.

This creative writing exercise is most of all enjoyable and yes, it does get one’s pencil moving. Here is what I quickly wrote, attempting to write poorly as my theme:

Bad Poem: Take First

Sisyphus expels fiction

Portable headstones rumbling nowhere

Fused opinions laugh at sweat

Mangle Josephine and Scarlet and Rastafarian hats

(Not even sure if that is a word, I continue)

Rain doesn’t come here

Snow doesn’t come here

Pacifists don’t come here

Snaggletooth and mulberries are frowned upon

over there though their new wall and

attempt at visibility works

Voo doo doll paves the way

So this is how this works?

First shots. Not a dunk or lay up

Hula hoop falls down the hips

Too many EL Fudge cookies

leave her belly trapezoidal

Try again

later

===

Your turn!

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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 Spring, 2015 and beyond.

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.

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

Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 07:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Thoughts on Thursday: Curve Balls, Strikes and Otherwise --

Sometimes life throws you curve balls: sometimes they are strikes and sometimes they are not. Today's Vlog post shares about a curve ball that thankfully was not a strike yet still left me feeling more than slightly befuddled.

I know there is wind sound in the video. I didn't want to edit it out because it reminds me of thunder and the unsure way I am feeling/being as I made this video. I apologize if you can't hear clearly AND if you crack open your heart just a little bit more, I think you will find even more meaning than you would have if the sound was stillness and in a studio someplace.

What are your thoughts?

Link up at JVKom Chronicles --

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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 Spring, 2015 and beyond.

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.

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

Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

How to Let Go of Some of the Assorted Not-So-Wise Things Other People Say

It had to have been a miracle of years of practice in emotional health.

Somehow I stayed in a good mood even though I was more than slightly incredulous when I heard him say “cancer prone” as he scribbled those same two words on the top page on his clip board.

I’m sure my face scrunched up - it is my habit - but in that moment I let go of both worry and meaning making as I prepared to be wheeled in for my first ever colonoscopy. It was an exchange I hadn’t imagined.

His question at the end of our first meeting was simply, "Any other health problems?” brought me to respond almost as an afterthought, “Oh, I have had melanoma and basal cell carcinoma, just two skin cancers.”

I suppose because those cancers have become integrated in my life I no longer think of them as a big deal, barely worth mentioning but somehow his translation of my “no big deal” into “cancer prone” grew in my mind, heart, and spirit as the space-in-time has stretched.

I had convinced myself the colonoscopy would bring a clear of cancer result - which it did - so it was like being hit broadside with a phrase my daughter Katherine said, “That should have been said silently in his mind.”

I’ve been engaging in deep psycho-therapy recently as well. I told my therapist a week ago that if I did have cancer again, I would continue the work we have been doing. The personal work is bigger than cancer, I told him.

Whatever core “stuff” is getting tangled up with the best edition of my life adventures would be relevant whether I had decades to live or weeks to live. I’m grateful it appears I have decades to go, though I also now this moment in my hand and my heart is truly all that is.

I set aside five minutes to write about this moment in time and then begin the practice of letting it go, letting the power of the doctor’s words fizzle out, much like the way a firework fizzles out in the sky. There for a blistering moment, a loud crash and then sffffffvt… sffffvt!

I have a choice to make this memory that lingers or just a moment in time of what once was that no longer has the oomph to hold my interest.

Once I finish writing this, the words will have done their duty and I will hear the fading sffffffvt.... sffffffvt.... until it fades into the background.

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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 Spring, 2015 and beyond.

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.

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

Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)

Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

Posted at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Box with a Big Purple Bow or.... Not.

I haven't been writing blog posts freely lately. I've been sticking to what feels like "prescriptive" writing. Today it felt so good to just set the timer and write.

Thank goodness for Stream of Consciousness Sunday!

I just pressed the timer and my hands won’t move. I don’t want to speak, I don’t want to write, I don’t want to tell. So much going on, wanting to spew.

I’ve been bellowing a-ha’s onto my morning pages but for the first time in my life, I don’t want to share them, I want to hold them. I don’t want to put out what is happening, what is where, what might be there, what I feel like because then.. I don’t know, it becomes dangerous?

I become accountable?

In the past when I wrote it, put it out there the process of forgetting began. I don’t want to forget, I want to stay present enough to process and for once and for all integrate knowing there isn’t a destination - there just is an is.

There just is an is.

There

just

is

an

is.

There is power in that.

There just is an is, there isn’t a place or a box with a big purple bow.

I have a question I’m living. I’m stepping into, “What would I make space for if I let my exile be a place of freedom rather than a place of condemnation.” I don’t need to be my own jailer.

I need to be my own wing-tender.

The five minutes still isn’t up.

Amazing.

I spoke I didn’t die yet, I put something on the page that may or may not make sense to anyone else and that’s just fine. What matters is I made it through this five, I can make it through the next five. It may sound like melodrama, but isn’t much oflife a melodrama - a comedy, a tragedy, a documentary?

There is just an is. An IS! As is.

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This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

Set a timer and write for 5 minutes.
Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. This is writing in the raw.
Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
Link back to the AllThingsFadra.com post (feel free to use the SOC Sunday graphic).
Add your post below (be sure to use the permalink to your post, not your blog’s URL; and only NEW posts please).
Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

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 Spring, 2015 and beyond.

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.

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May 23, 2015

Hyperbole is much alive in this title “This Fun Creative Writing Exercise Will Change Your Life”.

Seriously? One writing exercise will change my life?

I can’t support that wildly reaching proclamation but the article did, help me give birth to a poem draft. I haven’t written as much poetry lately and it made me sad. Writing a quick draft - badly on purpose - felt exceptional.

Does this change my life?

Maybe.

This creative writing exercise is most of all enjoyable and yes, it does get one’s pencil moving. Here is what I quickly wrote, attempting to write poorly as my theme:

May 21, 2015

May 17, 2015