Julie Unplugged

Reflecting on 2012 & Manifesting What's Next in 2013

I have participated in end of the year reviews since 2009 with a group of online friends, some old some new some in between. This year, like last, there were many options of prompts to choose from each day.

Depending on which prompt I write about, you will see the badge or header from that prompter. Click on the Reverb12 images to see what those particular blogs have to offer.

Now:

Encapsulate the year 2012 in one word. Explain why you choose that word.

 I started 2012 with my word focus being INTIMACY. I don’t mean sexual intimacy, I meant diving into everything more deeply. I wanted to stretch less wide and more deep. I wanted to come to know myself and those I love better.

I should congratulate myself because I did exactly that though not in ways I might have intended if I had a magic mirror or something similar. Nonetheless, dealing with challenges with my children, with my health via melanoma, and shifting mostly out of theater after years doing upwards of six or eight or ten shows or more, I have tended to closeness.

I have more close friends now than before and in some of those friendships there have been rocking and rolling and learning and sewing, metaphorically. I have also ended some friendships or perhaps “let go” of some friendships would be a better way to describe it.  Letting go has given me room to become intimate with others: those whose friendships I continue to savor.

I became more intimate with the chilling fear of melanoma. I remember when I answered the phone as I walked out of the office at my son’s school. The biopsy results were eight days of waiting. I was shocked when my doctor said “Its melanoma.” My daughter almost lost it: she had a belief I would die, no matter what. I am still dealing with leftover fear and fear that can be traced directly to this experience. I’m giving myself permission to continue with growing more intimate with this different variety of fear.

Now, imagine it's one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2013 for you?

GROWTH is my word for 2013 with a sub theme “Adding to the Increase” which I used in the program 42 Days of Passionate Prosperity I created close to ten years ago.

I want to continue growing – in a variety of ways.

I want to grow my creative life and writing coaching business, I want to grow in my publishing endeavors, I want to grow my audience, I want to help my children grow, I want the intimate friendships I have continue to grow, I want my financial abundance to grow, I want to grow and sprout and take deep root… you get the drift I am sure.

Isabelle Eberhardt  said, “For now it seems that by advancing into unknown territories, I entered into my life.”

I found this quote and it seems like I perfect fit. I want to grow comfortably in discomfort so that I may move into new territories I don’t even know right now.

Watch on my blog as I continue to develop this theme throughout the year.

Hooray for Growth: Adding to the Increase throughout 2013 and beyond.

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

 

Create Your Way to Stillness Amidst First-Week-of-School Chaos

The First Week of School Transitions Often Mean.... Crazed Hecticness!

Last Monday had a tumultuous feel to it. If Earthquakes had foreshocks rather than aftershocks, Monday felt like a foreshock. I kept waiting for the rattling to begin in earnest.

Rattling came in the three out of the five days Emma came home and cried in sadness that her first high school  days felt wobbly and uncertain.

Rattling came in my frustration with educational politics and even though Samuel seemed happy in his classroom, I was more than vaguely dissatisfied and worried what the ramifications would be for me making him make a change to a more appropriate for him classroom.

Somehow I knew, intuitively, that I should create something during those wobbly first days.

I wanted something meditative, something pleasant to experience both while I was creating it and after I finished. I dug for some of my painted papers and found pages with reds, oranges and yellows. “A return to the poetry fire, the creative fire or most of all, the blossoming of Word-Love fire, “ I thought to myself.

A cast off kitchen ornament was my canvas and I created this Word-Love-Fire Tulip.

It is decorated with a Horsey Dictionary page and a short story from a 1930’s text book. The story was written by a woman named Katharine Brush.

I love this tulip.

Maybe I will put it on a display to sell or maybe I will just keep it, for me to love.

Word-Love-Fire. What’s not to love?

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© 2013