Today my cell phone fell off a second floor balcony onto a sidewalk below and didn’t break.
Today I rushed to catch the sunset at a just right spot. I had only moments to get myself, my chair, my notebook, my phone to document it all - naturally - and my pen into place.
I sat down and started to write something which would be absolutely brilliant I was sure and then…. my pen ran out of ink.
I laughed. Not at first, but then, I laughed. I did my misadventures in anxiety exercises and breathed a little bit more deeply and the laughter gurgled up, like when you put drano down a clogged pipe and after a while everything starts slowly moving again?
When my phone fell, I didn’t shout an expletive.
I didn’t race down to chase it.
I was so tired I just looked it at, retrieved it and confidently typed some letters and it worked, perfectly. No worse than it had been before.
I said a short prayer of thanksgiving for the protective cover and a nod to God for making me buy said protective cover and figured this is how life sometimes is.
Things look bleak. Things look downright bad. I can either freak out or I can assess the situation, express gratitude and move along.
That’s what my phone taught my today.
That’s what my silly non-writing-the-sunset moment taught me today.
That’s what letting go has taught me.
I control nothing except for my attitudes, beliefs and responses to the situations that appear in front of me.
I mess up daily. Sometimes many times a day. And then I try again, even after declaring my never-seeming-to-end-less-than-I-would-like-to-be-status.
I started addressing anxiety earlier this week after living a week of completely out of control worry and fear. I decided to try to love fear and to let go of anxiety.
I’m getting better at both, probably because I am noticing what I am feeling and taking the time to settle into the “What is so” of the moment without trying to make it better or different or fit into what I think it should be.
Here’s the magic formula, if there is such a thing.
#1) Something bad (or you perceive to be bad) happens.
#2) Assess the facts of the situation.
#3) Express gratitude whether the facts are good, bad or neutral.
#4) Move along into something better than anxiety, perhaps even positive. Breathe deeply, perhaps or take a moment to sing a tune or write a sentence or smile for no reason other than your heart isn’t exploding out of your chest and you haven’t thought of hurting yourself for the last twenty minutes.
#5) Agree for this moment you will simply breathe a deep inhale and let it out. That’s your only assignment, your only “hafta do.”
Inhale.
Exhale.
Love.
You.
# # # # #
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 September 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.
Today I was stumped into writing silence. I didn’t know where to begin my writing. I didn’t know what I wanted to write about or how I would come up with anything at all interesting as all I felt was tired.
I felt worn out like frayed denim or all strained like a washcloth full of snags and rips once drenched and now left to dry in the hot California sun.
Like these examples, I felt so cliché, so trite, so devoid of anything interesting or original to say so I chose to do one of my favorite mundane tasks: look for quotes as writing seed starters.
I googled “peace quotes women” and the quotes which came up were perfectly fine but mostly about war. I meant more like inner peace, since I am working with anxiety - and minimizing it - this week.
I morphed into “contentment quotes”. I decided not to rule out quotes from men this time and once again, lots of wondrous words magically arose. I laughed and decided “This one, yes….this… is my most fertile writing seed.”
The most fertile words?
My beloved poet “friend”, Allen Ginsberg, reminded me, “We're all golden sunflowers inside.”
Laughter, that ever repeated “carbonated holiness” space as Anne Lamott describes it, is exactly what is missing inside me right now. My anxiousness seems to be a combination of lots of details, short time to complete my tasks and generalized angst.
Oh, the thought of Ginsberg’s words being so: “We're all golden sunflowers inside.”
I can’t help but smile. And that makes me happier, instantly.
“We're all golden sunflowers inside.” I can hear it being said in a variety of ways which makes the actor within me happy, too.
There is a story I have heard and have no idea of the facts behind it.
It goes like this: Buddha arrived in front of a gathering of eager students, waiting to hear wisdom. Buddha had a sunflower in his hand as he approached the students.
He didn’t speak a word, but he held the sunflower aloft for all to see and explore visually. He left without saying a word. He gave no narrative or discourse. His only commentary was silence.
He just held a flower: in my mind’s eye, a golden sunflower.
Jack Kornfield wrote this: “If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.”
I would agree and add to Kornfield’s words. If we see the miracle of any single thing clearly our whole life would change.
What if we morph the three gentlemen, Kornfield, Buddha and Ginsberg together. Take the serious spirituality within “If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.” and the wacky spirituality within, “We’re all golden sunflowers inside.” and the single flower sermon of Buddha and blend it with our laughter and perhaps sarcastic or unwilling incredulity and what would we find?
Just sit with that a minute. Miracle. Sunflower. Golden. Within us.
Maybe Jack Kornfield and Allen Ginsberg and Buddha and You and I are onto something.
I know I am smiling more now than I was when I sat down to write feeling stuck and wishing I had something to say.
Perhaps I still have not said anything helpful, but three gentlemen did.
Right now, that is more than enough.
Plus I’m starting to believe you and I are indeed golden sunflowers inside.
Once again, that makes me smile.
# # # # #
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 soon!
To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.
Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.
I can't remember when I stopped with a daily gratitude practice. Even without the dailiness, I will forever be thankful for the power of active gratitude in one's life. As I reach mid-way through my year (my birthday is in January so the six month mark is eight days away) I am thinking how to end the year with action and strength.
I am consciously creating shifts - if you read my other post today, Misadventures in Anxiety, you will see what I mean.
My friend Jen Alex Allen creates a weekly Tuesday Thanksgiving so I thought I would borrow her day to create my own list and allow myself that soft, quilt feeling of gratitude to wash over me as I continue with my day.
1. I am so grateful I get to witness sunsets like this one I saw from my dear friend Gai's backyard this weekend. How glorious is this view? My spirit calms at the sight of it and even now, looking at the photo, I feel peace again.
I am so grateful it is back-to-school sale season! I have purchased several new notebooks and sundries so far. I even allowed myself a prettier-not-just-practical morning pages notebook. Usually I use the cheapest most blah notebooks and composition books for my morning pages but this time, since it was on sale, I was willing to spend just a little bit more. My Mommy raised a frugal daughter.
I am so incredibly grateful for sacred spaces so close to wherever I find myself. This labyrinth is in Baywood Park, a section of Los Osos on the central coast. There is a less fancy labyrinth here in Bakersfield I use for prayer walking. Such powerful moments of grace are found in the labyrinth. I'm so glad I have been willing and open to trying them out in all the places I visit.
(And I am grateful for the online labyrinth locator!)
I love road trips in an over the top sort of way. I am so grateful I can pick up and go as regularly as I do. I suppose they might get tiresome if it was an allt he time thing, but for now... I am simply grateful for all the options open to me and I may freely travel to most places.
I am sooooo grateful!
I am sooooo grateful the rain this weekend made me s-l-o-w d-o-w-n happily and on purpose. Originally I was supposed to drive to the Pacific Northwest this week, but partially due to my extreme anxiety lately I couldn't bring myself to get up and go. Instead, I took it easy and gratefully received some extra special care from my friend Gai. You'll see a photo of her coming up below here. It was some unbelievably potent medicine: women helping each other when one is feeling unwell. Because I was calm and going slowly, everything felt better and I was able to stop along the way and get photos like this one. I am soooooo grateful.
I am sooooo grateful for my creative fascinations and projects, like the shopping cart photo series I've been creating for the past two plus years. One day I will do something more with them. For now, just fascinated by the metaphor. I am soooo grateful!
I am sooooo grateful for rainy day silly time with my friend Gai here in this crazy cut out. She is the mermaid. I am the pirate. We had been taking selfies but another daring in the rain tourist (or perhaps local!) came along and snapped a few for us. What a treasure of a friend and a forever memory filled with, "Remember the day when?"
I am soooo grateful!
What are you grateful for today?
# # # # #
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 September 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.
I don’t know how long it has been since we have had three days of rain in July in Bakersfield, but it must have been long, long ago if it happened at all since people have been taking track of such happenings.
Last night there was even thunder and lightning and… oh, no… THUNDER! I love thunder now, even loud crashing thunder we don't get here in Bakersfield. We get more of the rumbling, slightly far away thunder always out on the edges of the horizon.
Last night's thunder reminded me of my days in childhood when I ran away from lightning bugs crying “thunder, thunder!”
People who read my twitter feed may have noticed a rising tide of anxiety in my messages. Last Thursday I wrote,
“Dear Self, Waking up at 4 am due to anxiety about situations you can not control... oh, honey. Shhhh. Shhhh. Shhhh. Love, Your Self.”
I am about to start a couple nearly back-to-back road trips and to say I am anxious is… I wish I had a better cliché to throw on the page - an understatement. There are few things I love more than the wide open road and a loosely held plan, but I can feel the ache and the worry for these trips in my shoulder blades.
My right shoulder blade, right now, is tingling. That is fear spelled “shoulder blade ache”.
The writings of Martha Graham taught me the body always stands in truth. My job is to listen and respond to the truth it speaks. My body is telling me, “Julie, you are binding yourself in anxiety. You need to let your anxiety free, you need to note it and either use it in some creative way or release it to the divine.”
I wrote those words and a gentle breeze floated within me.
I realize I have a half century of being anxious to settle.
I imagine I have quite a bit of pre-language anxiety as well which may be more of a challenge and may, in fact, be at the core of my chronic unsettled nature.
This is simply who I have become over all these years. Not bad, not good, not different than many - it simple is who I have become and now, I need to do some polishing and gleaming up and away of what certainly doesn’t have room in my life.
Rain is a miraculous thing.
Three days of rain in July in Bakersfield. I never thought I would see that day. Maybe we can start with attempting three days free of anxiety in me.
I’m willing to give it a go.
Adventures in Minimizing Anxiety - here we come.
To shift away from anxiety and into peace, I will:
1. Create a series of poses/movements of release when I feel anxiety rising within me.
2. Continue with my daily writing and art practice. Face the anxiety that is reappearing via the creative process.
3. Let selected friends and loved ones know I am working on this so that they may help me along this three day playful experiment in minimizing anxiety.
What three simple steps might help you minimize your anxiety?
If you would like to borrow mine and mold them to make them your own, please do so.
Let me know how it goes.
# # # # #
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 September 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.
I don’t remember how old I was when I first read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, but I do remember sitting in my living room, cradled by a chair, fingers scanning the words in silence for hours.
I remember the climax.
I remember my eleven-year-old self crying and lunging into sobbing. “I love you!” Meg cried out to save her brother. “I love you, Charles, I love you!” The characters in the story were sobbing, I was sobbing.
I remembered this when I saw the book for sale for a quarter at a library sale this April. Twenty-five cents.
I bought it, figuring it was time for a re-read.
When I started reading, I realized the fifty-three year old me didn’t connect to the story as well as the eleven-year-old me.
The writing was still good, I supposed, but not nearly as riveting as my recollection of it. I kept picking the book up, reading a section and putting it down. I waited a day or two.
Ipicked it up, I put it down. I wondered how long it would take to get to the part I remembered. I didn't want to cheat and look ahead. I would not could not look ahead.
I would recognize it, I told myself.
"Keep reading," I told myself.
I ate my Special K and read bits of chapters one morning after I wrote my morning pages and drank my coffee.
Finally, nearing the end, I wanted to continue without stopping. The problem was I didn’t have much time.
This morning I discovered why I must’ve been so compelled to pick it up for a re-read. This morning I discovered why it was so important to continue, even when it felt like drudgery.
The quote, “Don’t be afraid to be afraid,” was eight syllables of dynamite, ready to rip through my world.
It wasn’t just, “Don’t be afraid,” which is licked with shame.
It wasn’t “Be strong” or “Be bold” or “Be - insert what feels like an impossible directive here.”
Instead it states what we all need to hear the most.
We will be afraid. Being afraid is a part of being alive. It is a reminder we are alive and growing. We are inhaling and exhaling.
When we stop allowing ourselves the room for fear - and the positive response to fear - we lose the ability to grow exponentially. We stay mired in habitual comfort zones and old experiences rather than new.
When we stop allowing ourselves to be afraid, we stay smooshed into that tiny box of what other people tell us is “the right way” instead of activating our unique genius. We give our power to the small-thinkers and the arrogance of those micro-managers whose self-interest is all pervasive. They don’t want us to stretch and grow and perhaps surpass them, they want to keep us in the zone of their ideas of appropriate or comfortable or “it’s the way we’ve always…”
I have often said to coaching clients, students and other people the best thing to do when fear strikes is to stand with it, to learn from it and then to act from what you learn.Too often I hear stories or witness people becoming afraid and turning and running from it, arms flailing, thinking it is a divine sign of “Danger, Danger!” which in fact sometimes it is.
More often, though, it is a time for pause and consideration, an affirmation you are growing into who you were always meant to be.
It is a space for holy acclimation and sacred celebration.
Do you hear what I am saying?
Don’t be afraid to be afraid! Allow love to work with you in this feeling of afraid, allow love to show you the way into and through it. Don’t allow the darkness that perpetuates fear to stop you. That defeats the purpose of love completely.
Hear what I am saying, please.
Step into it.
Walk around in it.
Come out the other side consciously.
What would happen if you decided to love fear?
In what ways would your life be different?
====
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 September 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.
This photo is me at about age 7 standing in front of our house. It is the closest in age snapshot I could find in my collection.
I remember it clearly: singing in the back of our dented up country squire station wagon.There are no seat belts and besides, I am not sitting in a seat. I am leaning back against the tire covers in what we called "the way back" above the spare tire, legs stretched out as I watch the world from the rear view window.
“Bye, bye ’71, come on ’72…” I was crafting lyrics and tune simultaneously as if there was no one else in the car. I don’t know what it means to be self-conscious, I just knew what it felt like to enjoy myself. I was singing and pondering, pondering and singing.
It is the week between Christmas and New Year’s. I don’t have anything to concern me. I am in the fourth grade, the height of my childhood mountain. I am at the top of the heap of the school social hierarchy. I am in the smart kids group at school - we are called “Group A” and we take that naming seriously. Our elementary school ends at fourth grade, so this is it. Our year, my year THE year for all good things.
On the last day before Christmas vacation as they gave out greeting cards from the big box made especially for that purpose, my name was called more often than any other. So many more times the teacher couldn’t mask her incredulity.
I was the star of the class play Mrs. Santa's Christmas Gift. I played Mrs. Santa. I sang a solo in "Do You Hear What I Hear." I rang the bells in “Silver Bells.”
I have one more month of the Single Digits, one more month before I turn ten-years-old.
Life is a divine mystery and it is clear to me I do and will and will always have if not the answers I have the path to discover the answers.
This is the “before” shot, when my genius is secure in her standing.
She is confident - and that confidence is proven, consistently through successful endeavors and adventures.
She is capable - she is chosen for all the important elementary stuff. Even though she isn’t athletically gifted, she is consistently chosen even in the sports teams for her level of charisma if nothing else.
She is courageous - she sticks up for the underdog and risks her social standing to help the less fortunate kids have a chance to be valued. (This may be why she gets so many Christmas cards and Valentine cards. The in-crowd appreciates her and the out-crowd appreciates her even more.
This is before fifth grade when she is dumped by all her in-crowd friends for the first time, leaving her to fall in social stature right as puberty, braces, glasses and acne careen into her existence all at once.
For this moment, her genius shines, unperturbed and glistening.
This is the before.
The value of her genius is best inherited in the moments, days, weeks and months after. Her expression, her countenance shifted into serious focus as she climbs out of the rubble once the worst of the aftershocks have stopped.
So what is relevant about this now?
Look at it this way: this nine-year-old, completely comfortable with herself me IS still me. I just forget to access her brilliance sometimes. In my current project, my confidence, my capable nature and my courage will serve not only my project but it will serve to further my progress.
Confidence means I believe in the significance of my life work. If there is an earthquake and rocks fall into my path, I know I am capable to take a deep breath and clear them. Courage serves in boldness and tenacity, forthright action and the ability to move forward even in the dark.
=====
This post was born from the inspiration from Dare to Excel, a mid-year application of what we've learned into our "what's next" from the folks at Tracking Wonder.
======
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 Summer, 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.
This is my most exact SOCSunday post yet. Seriously - five minutes on the dot. There is a form, there is a shape to this writing. I stayed on track and after spending much of the morning in creative mode, did a decent job and actually rested my thoughts along the way.
After I post this, I'm going to wash dishes. That feels like a bit of the rest I'm seeking.
It has been a morning filled with writing and thinking and sculpting thought and putting pieces together and reading and painting and… my mind is feeling so stretched and so full, it is like eating a very chocolate cupcake with very chocolate frosting and licking my fingers and then wondering. “Why the hell did I do that without taking a break?” so here I am, writing for five minutes about nothing and everything as I allow my gut a moment to translate.
Stream of consciousness, after all, creates space.
It lets some of that initial thought clutter its due - like an open mic for random thoughts. They like that possibility of being heard by someone instead of muttering in the untranslatable gloom of inexpressed thought.
Make that unexpressed thought.
Stream of consciousness is heady with mistakes. Good ones, much of the time, but mistakes nonetheless which is terrific practice for those of us breaking out of the bondage of perfectionism. That would be a great title for a cheesy self help book. It would be something like “7 Killer Keys to Breaking the Bondage of Perfectionism (From Someone Who has been there, done that and designed and sold the damn t-shirt!")
My shoulders feel better already.
My daughter plunks on the couch with wet hair, a t-shirt and panties and no pants. Yesterday she did the same thing and bellowed, “You see my legs! Big deal, get over it!”
I am wearing a muu muu afterall, barefeet on a footrest, DIY lap desk holding my computer.
I think I was much more entertaining before my free flow was interrupted by other people’s guides. I have twenty seconds left, my timer tells me.
Nothing? No more? No pithy, seventeen syllable didactic nugget of deliciousness?
A stage moment from Beyond Therapy perfectly captures what I'm feeling right now. Photo by Kayleigh Peaker. Loved this production & being Charlotte was such a privilege!
====
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 guidelines…
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 Summer, 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.
Here it is: another blog post borne from the encouragement of "That's what she said," an inspiring blog link up/series hosted by Dean and Courtney that uses the words of women as inspiration.
I had a bit of a breakthrough, though, which is what I wrote about on the blog post. My a-ha came right when I was so frustrated I almost tore up the little face I was creating. Something caused me to stay, though, and the result was deep love.
I have fallen in love with this mixed media face. Imperfectly perfect.
A reader commented about her lack of creativity. I responded like this:
“I would have said the same thing in the past. It wasn't until I started flexing my creative muscles in the direction which felt most familiar to me that I started to stretch into unknown - and in some cases quite scary - to me. A big part of my growth comes from not throwing it away and allowing the imperfection to woo me.”
Writing is my “anchor art” - the art form I have always used throughout my life is writing.
Alice my cat enjoyed sitting with me while I write. There is a piece of index card art next to my notebook.
Writing has never left me. Words have never deserted me, even when I was painfully depressed and was insistent the sound of my voice was an insult to humanity so I dared not speak.
My love for words prevailed.
Somehow, ironically - I even feel like words love me back.
I have worked as a life coach since 1999. Many of my coaching clients mentioned The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron as being a helpful resource. I decided to read it so I could speak about it with them. I like to know what may be of service to others as well as myself.
I also hold myself to not doing anything half-way, so I started working with the book, doing the exercises and also writing daily morning pages.
It is due to this writing practice - three pages of longhand writing in either a spiral notebook or composition book daily - that my life started changing and my creative inklings started to take form. It wasn’t just writing that blossomed.
I even found myself restoring a plain beige lamp I bought at a yard sale into a spectacle in purple and gold.
“Where did that urge come from?” I wondered as I proudly turned on my lamp.
I didn’t realize then that creativity begets creativity. When the creative process is ignited in one area, it is natural to stretch and spread into other areas, even when we have no idea how to do what we are attempting to do. At best, with creativity we simply follow the nudges without worrying about the product being "perfect."
Those are my personal favorites.
The creative process taught me to flounder.
This water color painting is called "Boom, Boom, BOOM!" and was inspired by a play I was in at the time. It is an abstract self portrait -
Creativity exposed me to the glory of drawing outside the lines, of disregarding the instructions in paint by number. I discovered the freedom of adding slight variations to cookie recipes, to drawing people with strangely colored hair and faces that include either handwriting or book pages.
I remember a time when my friends encouraged me to get a digital camera in the days before they were everywhere and long before our phones had powerhouse cameras included.
“My brain can’t learn another new thing,” I would tell them. “Seriously, I don’t have the capacity to stretch my way into another skill set.” I was exhausted just thinking about it.
I finally bought a digital camera: a cute pink Sony cybershot and I started my own process of playful experimentation.
My children are among my favorite subjects. Before the drought in California, the river ran wild - and Emma, now 17, loved it, too.
My Flickr account - where I put most of my photos for safe keeping - now holds 27,509 photos I have taken. Today’s traffic shows the photos that are receiving the most traffic today are photos tagged with “writing” which makes sense. Writing is my anchor art, remember, and if creativity was a family with a lineage, writing is what gives birth to the rest of my creativity.
Here I am in "Beyond Therapy". I won best supporting actress for the season for this performance. Wacky and I loved it!
I have given myself permission to be a beginner, to grow through creative adolescence and to continue to develop as a cross genre creator of art whether that art is performance - because I was also reborn as an actor and became a director thanks to writing practice - or art one can touch and hold. My writing and photos are in books, greeting cards, magazines, websites and in people’s homes.
One of my mixed media pieces. Love working with layers, textures and other's creativity such as this letter from the 1940's.
The latest stretching is into the world of mixed media, where my art has also found its way into private collection.
I didn’t put any of this on life goal lists.
My heartbeat knew better. I started to create and then got out of the way. And I repeated the process over and over again.
When at Six Flags, I wrote and sketched while my son waited in line. Can you tell I am at a crowded amusement park here?
Like Maya Angelou tells us, “You can’t use up your creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”
====
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 September 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.
To keep my creative flow - and every day life - moving, I start most of my days with my notebook and writing. Yesterday I also took out my vintage text books and started tearing out pages which I covered with paint. One of these pages (one from a book titled Readings for College Writers from 1953) became a "canvas" for my painting of a portrait of a fictitious girl.
Taking it... slow!
First came a gesso-based face.
Her hair was thick silver - grey acrylic paint with purple painted in. Her face was created with pencil, pastel and more acrylic paint. Her eyes are the same purple as her hair.
This moment was when I was ready to give up. I was ready to just stop the whole process and toss the card completely.
She was so asymetrical and her cheeks and eyes were messed up. I couldn't fix it.
But then I kept going. And I fell in love with her little face, exactly how she looks.
I took it slow and that was just right!
= = =
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.
I was raised to believe certain emotions were not to be felt or expressed. At best, these “negative” emotions should be shut down, stuffed or covered with something “pretty” to make it easier to pretend they didn’t exist. Negative emotions made other people uncomfortable and this was one of the big “hell no’s” in my family.
Angry, for example, wasn’t allowed. Sad was better. Nice girls are allowed to cry, preferably quietly and primarily in private so as not to interfere with anyone elses happier or more acceptable feelings.
Today, for a combination of reasons I felt almost unbearably angry. I realize after stepping back and thinking about it, perhaps it is a combination of the white supremacist gang member I saw while eating breakfast alongside the lack of ability to impact the lives of little Jaxon and his mom coupled with the desire to see my friends follow through on their best visions for their lives and let’s face the honest truth here, frustration with my own lack of follow through on my own best vision for my life on a consistent basis.
In the moment, though, all I knew was I felt pretty darned ruffled and I did what felt better than angry and that was to use my anger to “take care of business.” My kitchen table needed to be cleared so I could get my creative work done. The floor needed to be swept and mopped. There were dishes in the sink but I ignored them while I took on the very physical and more movement oriented task of sweeping and mopping.
It felt good to be angry.
It felt good to get something done.
I felt pleasure in the sounds of the broom and the movement of the dirt into the trash can. My anger felt like it was laughing as I sloshed water about the bucket and the room and later dumped the filty water down the sink and disinfected the bucket once it was emptied.
Deeper and more heavy frustration followed me onto the page. I took a barely started, half-finished art journal card that needed to be finish and darn it, I would get it done.
The paper used to make the card was painted, folded up, and hung on the line to dry.
I knocked over a cup of supplies which further fueled my miffed feelings as I angrily scratched words onto the card, using it as a journal.
I threw gesso on the page and used my fingertips as a brush.
I kneaded the card as if it was bread, pushing the gesso in to the orange gouache paint from the day before. My frustration and anger minimized slightly. I wrote some vaguely inaccurate yet important words on the card. Please be aware grammar and punctuation do not count when free writing or art journaling.
“I don’t know what I want to say, really, about this flat out feeling, sad, feeling I’m having. Flat out feelings of sad are never good, afterall. They tend to return and repeat (on the vintage book page I used as a foundation for my card the word “boomerang” sang out.) a boomerang. I circled the word “boomerang” and stopped my pen from her dance.
“I wish I could take a snapshot of this feeling and make it disappear and get the fudge (only I didn’t write fudge) out of the way. But wait, restlessness helps.”
I sat back in my chair. Restlessness might not be “good” on its own, but it is a positive thing to make one stop and reconsider the choices one has made and continues to make.
In parenthesis, by the balloons on the card I wrote, (“So I should be saying thank you.)
Again, later, I think a different word than “should” might be more appropriate. Wording like “Gratitude for restlessness is more constructive” AND I also note, anger would use words like “should”. Anger would point her bony finger and incant “You should be saying thank you, ingrate!”
I am calmer now than I was when I attacked my kitchen floor. I have boomeranged back to my usual self.
The creative process soothed and quieted the anger and simultaneously allowed me space to be wholeheartedly angry. A chore I had been avoiding because a sensual experience and yet another piece of the process of making constructive meaning out of an unpleasant feeling - one I recognized as anger and frustration but which I masked in writing as “sad” and “restless.”
Finally, as I wrote this essay to tie the experience with a red ribbon, I wrote several variations of a closing.
It may have taken me several decades longer than I would have liked, but I am coming to know anger more intimately. I am allowing it to be a constructive partner rather than a destructive force I turn and run away from when I see her coming.
= = =
Sadness and restlessness do not pack the walloping punch anger carries. Sometimes we need the gentler family members to help us find the meaning that will take us where we are meant to be.
= = =
I stretch my arms up over my head and arch my back. I hear my voice say “Oh, that feels good,” and I wonder if that is all there is left to say? The creating, the writing, the retelling, the stretching, the restless anger and sadness - now, the creativity, has summed it up in “that feels good.”
For now, I’ll take that ending
=====
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 September 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.
Recent Comments