Julie Unplugged

Will You Transform Your LIfe Today? Choices, Beliefs and a Challenge to Take Passionate Action

We often make choices based upon the things other people say to us or have said to us in the past.

“Monday isn’t a good day to…” and “People don’t like people who….”and sometimes as ridiculous as “only skinny girls may wear skinny jeans.”

There are times we don’t give any conscious thought of who from the past or present is actually steering our life. Think about it with me for a moment.

Your life may be driven by a belief implanted by someone long gone from our every day experience.

My thoughts go to my third grade teacher, who I often hear scolding me for my ugly handwriting or my siblings as children who were, like me, just doing the best they could to survive in their everyday existence, too.

Now that we are adults, we are able to – and privileged and honored to – make choices according to what we know is true. Sometimes this takes stretching our belief muscle to fully integrate that belief, to make it show up daily in our conscious actions.  When we do so, we practice making other potent decisions based on passion and purpose rather than fear and scarcity.

When we choose to take passionate, conscious actions we will shape our life experience so much more richly. “One choice defines your belief. One choice can transform your life,” said Veronica Roth. Every action, every choice we make proclaims to the world what we truly believe, not just what we say we believe.

Will you make a different choice today?

Will you choose to transform your life and world today through making choices that match with what you say you believe?

Today, I’ll devote myself to following my own heart-mind-soul beliefs rather than be limited by endlessly playing loops from the scolding or just limitations imposed due to unconsciousness from others.

What about you?

Will you devote yourself to consciously make choices that serve you and the world? Will you devote yourself to consciously make choices that are in alignment with the world you want to inhabit?

Share with me as your day goes along.

I’ll be tweeting and snapchatting my adventures as a way to stay accountable.

I would love to hear your adventures as your life is transformed through the conscious choices you are making now.

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One Word for 2014 - Bold: One Incredibly Simple DIY Project

 

I love how the paint turned out here....

Claiming “one word” as a theme for the year is not new. It has certainly spread like wildfire, though, in one way as a substitute for resolutions.

 

My word this year is BOLD.

I am committed to keeping my word at the forefront of my mind so I made one of the most simple DIYs ever to hang above my desk as a constant reminder.

Yesterday my daughter and I visited Hobby Lobby, which is new in Bakersfield. I didn’t think their prices were all that great and they didn’t have letters to stick and unstuck, so I was pretty unimpressed.

 

Left over paint, not very good glue stick, chipboard letters and a dictionary page = way too much fun.

I decided to buy chipboard letters and some really cheap glue sticks to make easily repositionable letters. This diy was my practice for a “real” project but I love how it turned out so I am allowing it to become a “real” project.

 

I simply glued the letters to a page from one of my many old dictionaries. I spray painted some purple on the page – not a heavy coat and since the paint can was almost empty this was easily done.

I immediately took the letters from the page so they wouldn’t dry on. It was just a tiny bit trickly so I used a craft stick as leverage.

I love how this turned out and am considering what other words to create. I have so many old books to use I could make word signs for eons and still have plenty of paper.

Oh, one last thing. My daughter and I decided using chipboard letters in place of repositionable stickers would allow us to use them over and over which makes this project both an example of repurposing it is also a (for the most part) green project.

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 Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at a First Friday soon, when it is warmer than it was in December!, in Downtown Bakersfield. 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!

   © 2013 - Julie Jordan Scott - all rights reserved.

 

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"Sometimes the greatest risk is taking no risk at all." Julie Jordan Scott

Don't Mess with Barracuda Mommy - A Tale of Parental Bravery & Student's Rights

I am a barracuda when it comes to my kids.  If someone seems out to do anything that goes against their interest, I will stand up with a vengeance.

I am learning – and getting better – at doing this for myself.

My bravery this year, though, comes in standing up for Emma, my daughter who is now a junior at Bakersfield High School.

She was a sophomore at a different school last year, a school my two older daughters had both attended there and we had been happy with the education provided them. Somehow Emma always seems to be in the crossfire of educational mediocrity as well as lack of visionary thinking.

This Summer, the school elected to terminate the student newspaper. Being the editor of the paper was one of Emma’s educational goals. She had been Managing Editor her sophomore year and the natural progression would be toward editor. Student newspapers are one of the primary avenues for students voices to be heard.

For mediocre thinkers and educators, this is a dangerous thing.

The school knew I would ask for a transfer. They had seen our written educational plan. Most parents don’t do the level of educational planning we do, but I am not like other parents who don’t realize they and their child have educational rights provided by law.

I stood in the office and cried. “I never wanted this for my child, never.” I had changed high schools in my sophomore year and my personal guideline is once a child begins high school, we wouldn’t move or change school districts. I remember how tough it was to change high schools. Now here I was, asking to change high schools. It went against everything I believed in

I didn’t want to transfer Emma yet I knew I had to transfer Emma in order for her to pursue her educational plan.

She was frightened and angry, I was frightened and angry: to top it off the first day of school was her sixteenth birthday. The silver lining was how much friendlier and how much more reasonable the administration is at her new school. They actually see students as individuals. They appreciate parent participation. Their campus doesn’t look like a prison.

They have a dynamic AP program. Their performing arts program has a reputation as top notch in the district.

Emma auditioned for the first play of the year and got a great role, something in all her time at her other school she never managed to accomplish, even though she has talent in both acting and singing. She made friends quickly and once again, when I walk around with her on campus people call out, “Emma!” and “Hi, Emma.”

When I talked to a student at her old school – we went to see the Fall play there to support the students who we will always adore and support – the student said, “It just isn’t the same here now.” Her journalism teacher who is now retiring early said, “There is an Emma shaped hole at our school now.”

I was raised to respect people in authority.

Thankfully, I was also raised to ask questions and to think rather than agree with whatever "authority" says.

I was also raised in a home where my parents had to fight for my brother, who had Down’s Syndrome, to receive an education back in the 1960’s. I have had to fight for my son with autism to receive the appropriate education he is entitled to by law.

My daughter Katherine attends a top notch East Coast school – one of the seven sisters colleges – and has been accepted at Princeton for graduate school. She graduated fifth in her class from the high school Emma left. Katherine's educational success  is partially because I wanted what was best for her and she knew I would do anything to come alongside her to make it happen.

If you are a parent out there reading, even if you are quaking in your boots, you must stand up for a decent education for your child. He or she deserves the best. Stand up for it. Who cares if you are one of “those parents”? It is good and right and yes, I think holy to be one of “those parents.”

There are times you may have to be braver than you think you are, but the payoff is worth it. In a way, I figure I am not only fighting for my children, but I am modeling for my children to fight for their children and to be active participants in the educational process.

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 This post is a part of my response to prompts for ProjectReverb. Check them out on Twitter @Project_reverb and with the hashtag #reverb13

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 Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at First Friday each month in Downtown Bakersfield. 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!

   © 2013 - Julie Jordan Scott - all rights reserved.

How Will You Invest Your Irreplaceable Light of This Day?

Give this some contemplative time to reflect and consider: How will you invest your irreplaceable light of today?

Yesterday morning I sat on my front porch and watched the colors of sunrise which were indescribable. What would one call the light coming off the clouds? The most gold rays hadn’t come through so it was primarily a pure high note of color. I could use a metaphor of “invocation” if I was feeling church-like. I could use a metaphor of “preface” in the next great book to come, I could use the “prelude” from the Sound of Music if I was having a musical theater morning.

None of those fit exactly, though, and my reverie was shaken by an upset Emma and the need to move beyond my porch and into the rest of my life.

It wasn’t until this morning, yesterday’s tomorrow, that I noted I hadn’t even sat at my keyboard since yesterday’s ripped from the porch reverie moments, trying to be super Mommy and wipe my child’s early frustration from the whiteboard of her day.

Twenty four hours had elapsed since I sat here and wrote a word.

I had texted and tweeted and photographed, but I hadn’t sat here in my chair and “spoken” to you, beloved reader.

Last night I watched the sunset, too. I noticed the different texture and tone of the goodbye of August 26 that was so different than the texture and tone of the hello of August 26.  It was burnt orange and red the closer it got to its final word.

The initial descent had a similar vibe to the morning: optimism still steadfast as I clicked my first photo from the close-to-my-house bluffs.

As it came closer to the horizon, the deeper more insistent colors took hold.

The sense of urgency now held the sun and held my eyes, “What have you done with me?” it asked.

“How have you invested these precious hours of light?”

Interesting, in retrospect, that yesterday was tangled up in so many things other than writing, what I lovingly refer to as my anchor art.

I had, however, collected notes in my mind, as Miss Prism reminds us in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest, “Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us.”

How blessed am I to carry the memories of yesterday’s sunrise and sunset and deliver them back to you?

I think last night’s sunset is smiling, saying “Yes, you invested our moments well.” I did choose, after all, to experience both the sunrise and the sunset. Both transitions were brand new while also compellingly ancient in their retelling.

Maybe you are reading this after the light of one day has faded, in the respite of the darkness and waiting for your next day to arrive.

How will you invest (spend, use, empower, devote, endow) your irreplaceable hours of light?

Maybe your day is just beginning. The same holds true for you: How will you devote your irreplaceable hours of light?

For each and all of us: How will you use your irreplaceable hours of light?

The sum of your days and how you spend them lead, as always to, “How do you truly want to endow and empower your life?”

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

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Follow on Instagram

And naturally, on Pinterest, too!

© 2013

 

Courage: In More Ways than One

The butterflies in my stomach were unusual.

Sometimes it is most courageous to accept the emptiness and let the light in.

I wasn’t preparing for a performance, after all, I was preparing for a first rehearsal. The only audience would be my castmates and my director and each of them has enough going on to notice whether or not I was doing a decent job or not.

Then I remembered: I hadn’t had a first rehearsal in over a year. After my tiny role in Reckless  - a similar case where the Director asked me to fill in after someone else vacated a role – I walked into rehearsal after everyone else was settled.

On the counter in the dressing room from the last show I did.

This isn’t new to me.

This year it is the only way I could imagine doing a show: auditions are something I don’t want to do again for a while. If you remember my recent turn in VDay, I will remind you I have been a part of that movement for eight years: it isn’t the same as other roles.

I was prepared to talk to my Director beforehand.

Just in case she didn’t know or realize about my cancer. I wanted to “come clean” that my melanoma left a facial scar which I have been told repeatedly doesn’t show under lights and make up.

I believed that until in the last week two complete strangers asked me what happened to my face. Was it trauma, they wondered? Was it cancer?

My friends all tell me it is unnoticeable, but I trust strangers more than friends. Perhaps it is just that strangers notice more in the “not knowing who I am”. They don’t have a story attached to my name or a history attached to our relationship simply because we don’t have one yet.

My biggest fear with theater and my scar is it will distract audience members. They will wonder, “Was it trauma? Is it part of her character? Does the actor know she has that thing on her face?”

I normally have a fear of not doing well when I step on the stage. I normally worry about disappointing my director, that the moment will come when my director wonders why she or he chose to ask me to participate in the production. I’ve never been one of those conventionally attractive people anyway, so the scar just adds to my concern.

I was reassured: all was well, I didn't need to worry about my scar, I was told. I could start to quiet those voices of insecurity. It took a lot out of me to even bring it up to her.

Last night, though, all of those fears and inner voices left while I was in the midst of negotiating my script and getting to know my character, taking tiny steps into my relationship with her and who she is outside of me.

I remember when theater was a new – or shall I say renewed? – experience for me. I wrote about it all the time then. It was an all consuming passion, raging through every line I spoke.

I’m not sure how it will be this time.

The days will come and the days will go. I will learn my lines and my blocking. I will laugh with the cast and crew and perhaps there will be more momentary fear.  There will be dressing room stories. There will be that familiar “We’re in this together in this theater foxhole feeling” which I have been missing a lot lately.

Now that I mention it, wasn’t it a couple weeks ago I was missing theater so much my eyes filled with tears that stung my lids? The tears didn’t fall, they just sat there, frozen, wishing I would have the courage to get out there again.

Last night apparently my courage found me. She found me, actually, in more ways than one.

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This post is Number 14 of 30 and was inspired by the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I fell behind due to my travels and am hoping hoping hoping to catch up. Please give me some extra TLC via commenting, etc - as I will need it as I write write write for the next week or so!

Throughout the month I will be posting writing and creativity tips especially to make your writing (and your writing experience!) better.

In these last few days of the challenge I will be posting twice daily because of the traveling I did mid-month.

I'm so glad you are here!

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!

Talk about Taking a Risk: When Your Mentor is a Completely Surprising Not a Surprise at All.

Today’s NaBloPoMo question from BlogHer goes like this:

Who out there in the world would be

the best mentor for your ideas and goals?

You want to talk about risk? My response to this question feels like a huge risk to put out there for all of heaven and Earth to see.

I almost don’t want to answer this because my response sounds really cliché. Seriously, over the top cliché.

The thing is, once I asked today’s NaBloPoMo question, I couldn’t wipe the cliché response out of my head. I’ve thought it over and here’s what I’ve come up with: cliché is only bad when we say it out of complete lack of creativity.

My response to this prompt is completely truth-filled and nothing less.

My first thought was “I have no idea” and then I remembered when I was pregnant with my son and on my own raising my two daughters, I chose to see God as my partner. It helped me through a lot of dark days. I spent a lot of time chatting with God then, just sort of “hanging out” in nearly constant prayer and communion.

Times change and I don’t do that much anymore.

What I have discovered is that when I do “hang out” with God and include Him in my choices and actually ask for his advice on things via prayer and contemplation, everything in my work and my life improves.

Since I am a creative entrepreneur, who but the Creator of the Universe would be the perfect mentor to bring my (I should say our) ideas into fruition.

There. I said it. I wrote it. And now I am even going to hit publish!

 

Are You Ready to Risk & Rock & Roll?

Today from BlogHer's NaBloPoMo:

If you didn't have to be concerned about money or expertise, what would be your ideal job?

I never want to have a job again. I do have my ideal life work is exactly what I do now (write, teach, create art, life coach, speak, Mommy… ) but if I had all the money in the world to promote myself (and the time, remember yesterday’s bullies!) and a personal assistant to work with me on the stuff I don’t like to do, I could be helpful to so many MORE people.

I would like to do MORE of what I do and LESS of what I don’t want to do.

It is pretty simple:

1. Eradicate Belief Bullies  (I wrote about this yesterday) by Taking Passionate Action
2. Follow up according to the results of #1
3. Find more new and creative ways to rock the world that are uniquely me.
4. Continue to tweak, revitalize and restore.

Are you ready to see it happen?

I am ready to risk & rock & roll!

 

 

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© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

Start and Continue: Begin Again (and again and again) on a Monday Morning, Swim in a Sea of Irony Kind of Day

What do you want to start? What do you want to begin again?

I am swimming around in the sea of Irony on this fine March Monday Morning. How are you?

 

This blog post has been created and disappeared several times which I am taking as a message to be short, sweet and to the point.

I want to begin again. I want to begin to work my writing, publishing and creative life coaching businesses with the gumption I had when I first started what feels like several lifetimes ago. I want to begin feeling excited about that aspect of my life, I want to continue to restore my confidence and remember what it is like to have an ongoing experience of being a conduit for passion and purposeful change in someone’s life.

I realize that “change” word might get in the way of some people’s thought process, but instead I would ask you to look at change with awe instead of anxiety, with curiosity rather than animosity.

We can’t grow if we don’t change.

We can’t grow if we don’t allow ourselves to be vulnerable.

We can’t grow if we don’t remind ourselves and make it a practice to continually and contentedly begin again.

There. My entry is still here.

I am passionately beginning again. I am starting and continuing.

Join me.

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This post was inspired by a prompt from the women at BlogHer, who create a monthly NaBloPoMo theme. This month the focus is on Risk. It is the first time I have participated and I am glad to report it is marvelous!

 

 

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© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

14 Quotes for you to Live on the Subjects of Risk & Courage

Is this the Quote You Will Live Today?

There are no prompts from BlogHer on the weekends of NaBloPoMo. I am usually pretty busy on the weekends but I wanted to keep the momentum going, so I did one of my favorite things: Put together a short quote collection on the topic we are writing about: risk, this month.

The quotes are mostly from women, but there are some men here as well, in about the usual proportion of men quotes to women quotes.

Which of these quotes will you play with, and live toward, today?

Accept that all of us can be hurt, that all of us can--and surely will at times--fail. I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst, take the risk.--Joyce Brothers

All my life I have gone out on a limb, but I have turned the limb into a bridge, and there is cool, clear water flowing under.--Holly Near

Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings.--Victor Hugo

Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow.--Alice M. Swaim

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 I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this.--Spencer Silver, inventor of Post-It notepads

If you don't go after what you want, you'll never have it. If you don't ask, the answer is always no. If you don't step forward, you're always in the same place.--Nora Roberts

If you don't risk anything, you risk even more.--Erica Jong

If you play it safe in life you've decided that you don't want to grow any more.--Shirley Hufstedler

It's better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.--Sister Elizabeth Kenny

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.--George Eliot

Please know I am quite aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.--Amelia Earhart

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

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.--Helen Keller

 

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© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott

 

You Know You Want To: Show Yourself a Little (or a lot of) Love Today

A Visual Reminder of My Value in the Gift I Gave Myself Today

I had a rather restorative day today: I saw Silver Linings Playbook (again) with a friend who had not seen it yet.  We went to lunch at our favorite Mediterranean “fastaurant” before visiting our local Trader Joe’s. When we were walking toward the store I knew I wanted to buy myself flowers.

I told my friend, “I am going to buy myself some flowers today.”

He laughed and  said, “Oh, are you fancying yourself more than usual today?”

To which I responded, “Well, I have been exceptionally grateful with my caretaking during my illness this week. I think I deserve to be rewarded for such loving patience so I am going to give myself flowers and say, ‘Julie, well done!’”

We both laughed because yes, it was absurd but yes, it was also exactly what I needed.

Trader Joe’s has ridiculously inexpensive flowers so for under ten dollars I got either an enormous bouquet or two regular sized bouquets. The enormous version is now sitting on my desk. I can smell the flowers as I type.

Take pride in loving yourself enough to enjoy giving yourself gifts others have forgotten to give you.

I am smiling as I smell the flowers as I type.

“Julie, you’re great!” the flowers sing.

“Why thank you, Julie, you are something else yourself,” I respond to the flowers/me.

How simple of me to show me some love like this and wow, how much enjoyment I am giving myself!

I started buying myself flowers years ago, but I’ve never gotten in the practice of it. I sort of participated in a challenge to make my home more welcoming in January and one of the first things we were cued to do was to buy fresh flowers once a week. Everytime I purchase and arrange flowers, I get a pick-me-up. I have bought inexpensive flowers at the local Farmer’s Market, in the grocery store, and like today – at a favorite “alternative” market filled with both yummyness and beauty.

Naturally, I don’t mind if someone else decides to buy me flowers, but getting them for myself – with pride – is a way of making myself and anyone else who walks into my house or even you, reading my blog – feel treasured.

Perhaps these words give you permission to go treat yourself.

Why don’t you try it?

You have permission to giggle at yourself while finding out how much a less than ten dollar investment may bring complete contentment into your heart.

Let me know how it goes.

 

 

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© 2013 by Julie Jordan Scott