The prompt says August 30 but I am really writing on
September 1.
Life has been like that lately. I intend for something and
then life walks past me before I am able to lift myself from my chair. It isn’t
the Bakersfield heat that is doing it, instead it is the way I have been
holding on to stuff there is no need to hold onto.
I made a fascinating observation the other night.
I haven’t made any long term goals for myself since my
brother died five years ago.
I had so much pain that year I guess part of its echo was “Don’t
plan anything because life isn’t a forever thing anyway, you’re heart is going
to be crushed consistently anyway and guess what, it is like John Lennon said, ‘Life
is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.’”
My first book bore the title, “Don’t Let it Take Two Death
Threats” and it told the story of my “escape” from a conventional lifestyle
after two of my clients with severe schizophrenia threatened to kill me. I
experienced more personal growth during that time than ever before but somehow
I lost track of those lessons in some of my intervening years.
Back to the prompt: how I’m gearing up for the Fall –
I am using this week as a mini-home-based retreat to focus
on clearing away old projects and making space for new projects. My eldest
daughter is leaving for her semester at University of Edinburgh in Scotland
tomorrow, so everything will instantly be simplified.
That is the biggest thing I am doing right now to gear up
for the Fall: I am stepping back and looking forward at the same time. I am not
letting it take two death threats or the anxiety of skin cancer or anything
else for that matter get in the way of my primary mission – being a part of
changing the world for the good via writing,
creativity and just me being
myself and helping you, my reader, just be yourself.
There is great freedom in this, like the smell of the Autumn
air, or the crisp moments between darkness and sunrise.
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity
Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since
1999. She is
also an award winning Actor, Director,
Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the
StoryTelling Slam
champion in Bakersfield.
Did
you enjoy this essay? Receive emails directly to your
inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion
Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost)
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I don't know anyone who wouldn't like more passion, joy and pleasure in his or her life. These five methods are so easy to incorporate into your life and yes, even though simple they will make a significant difference. You will be able to take your life today and make it better for tomorrow. Keep repeating until all of a sudden you notice your life has improved without much an effort at all. This stuff is easy!
Let's start now -
1. Show up wherever you are with all your senses turned on. Sometimes practicing using the less dominant senses – for example, sense of sound rather than using vision for all your information – will help you observe life differently. Remember the sense of smell is our most ancient so its memory power is incredible. Your first grade teacher’s perfume on the first day of school is probably tucked away in there. Plus taking a deep breath to smell it all in will also help you learn to practice calming down through using your breath.
2. Keep your eyes on the metaphorical ball while scanning the horizon. There was an old saying when I was in Drivers Ed back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. “Aim high in steering” they told us. I think to this day I get some of my best insights and a-ha’s while driving because my eyes are constantly scanning and my brain is constantly engaged. Wisdom just floats in. Sometimes I even pull over to take notes other times I tell my brain, REMEMBER THIS! And guess what? It does!
3. Listen to all the sounds around you – the most surprising messages may be there.There is a famous book called “Do what you love and the money will follow”… I say "If I'm not having fun, its not getting done,"because my philosophy is I can make anything fun by simply being creative. Yes, even washing dishes and doing laundry can be fun. If you can’t change what you do, change your attitude about it. Be more childlike - remember how children make everything fun?
4. Don’t be a creature of habit! Simple things like taking a different road will open your eyes to wonders right in your neighborhood you never knew were there. When you hear yourself start to say, "Well, you know me I always do it..." stop! Replace with, "Well, you know me. I love adventure and discovering new places, people, activities... you name it!"
5. Devote yourself to trying something new as often as possible. Give yourself a weekly goal, perhaps, and a challenge goal of two new things a week. It can be simple, like eating a new veggie or a new flavor of ice cream. It can be big, like actually volunteering to learn the hula in front of a bunch of strangers. Always wanted to rock climb? Take a class! Never been to an art opening? GO! Dress up! No one will point and laugh at you. I promise.
Here’s a bonus example from my life just this week:
I woke up way too early yesterday morning. I opted not to go back to sleep since before I knew it I would be getting the kids ready for school. What did I do? Some small chores, some writing. I took the trash out and on the way to the outdoor trash can I looked up.
I was instantly awestruck. The sky was more beautiful than any painting I had ever seen. The day was dawning at a time I was normally asleep. If I had kept my head down, focused only on my tasks and to-do's, I would have missed it completely.
It took less than five minutes to have a complete transformation of mood because I was alert to life and I took what life spooned up for me. I didn’t get angry about waking up too early, I took care of business and noticed the beauty of nature right outside my front door. It doesn’t get much better than that… and you can do this anywhere, even in the middle of an urban area you will hear crickets or hear dogs barking far away or see stars or notice how differently the neighborhood smells in the fresh new, before sunrise day.
I will remember August 21, 2012 for the rest of my life simply because I agreed to stay awake rather than go back to sleep.
I wouldn't change waking up early for anything now.
Would you gain benefit in applying any of these principals or just make your life more fulfilling? Call for a complimentary coaching session now - 661.444.2735.
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield.
I couldn’t help but fall in love with Gold Rush writer Dame Shirley, who was called Louise (Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe) by the people who knew her.
Her place in literary history came from the letters she wrote to her sister, Molly, who lived in Western Massachusetts. Louise entertained her family as she made a life with her young husband first and last in San Francisco with two years in the early 1851 and 1952 along the gold mines of the Feather River northeast of San Francisco where young couple moved because Mr. Clapp was in ill health.
Louise’s writing became a powerful link to the lives of the women of the California Gold Rush.
I especially enjoyed her letter to Molly telling about when she actually tried on the occupation of Gold Miner. “Nothing of importance has happened since I last wrote you except that I have become a mineress; that is if the having washed a pan of dirt with my own hands, and procured therefrom three dollars and twenty five cents in gold dust, (which I shall inclose in this letter) entitle me to this name.”
Her letter continues to share she would rather not continue as a miner. She realized the male miners were hungry for female companionship while doing this grueling work. The solution, they thought, was to hand a new mineress a pan to sift through that was heaped with gold as an encouragement for her to continue because “it was such easy work.” They knew better AND they wanted more women around!
When she and her husband returned to San Francisco, she wasn’t happy about it. She wrote in her final letter: “My heart is heavy at the thought of departing forever from this place. I like this wild and barbarous life: I leave it with regret.” Her husband was tired of California completely. They divorced, he moved to Hawaii and eventually back to the eastern US and she added an “e” to the end of Clapp forever becoming Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe and happily stayed in San Francisco.
Her colorful letters were first memorialized via a magazine called The Pioneer in 1854 and 1855. Famed California writer Bret Harte later published fiction that bore a stunning resemblance to the stories Louise told in her letters to Molly.
Harte was her primary detractor, criticizing her letters when published in The Pioneer. Interesting, isn’t it, that when questioned about the similarities between her early letters and Hart’s later work when she was a teacher in San Francisco in later life, she stood beside her frenemy saying, “Oh, no he didn’t plagiarize my stories. He was unconsciously recreating what he had read from my letters and meant no harm.”
She taught for twenty years before returning to Elizabeth, New Jersey, where she was born. Another irony from Dame Shirley’s life was she rekindled her friendship with Bret Harte’s estranged wife in New Jersey. She actually lived in the boarding house of one of Mrs. Harte’s nieces when she died in 1906.
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -
“ Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. ”
— Eugene V. Debs
I was discouraged yesterday and believe it or not, I made that discouragement mean I was wrong. My not very productive thought was “If I was doing the right thing with my life, I wouldn’t feel discouraged. I wouldn’t feel discouraged.”
What I did next was important, though. I got up and moved away from my stuck place behind the keyboard.
I went about doing chores, taking care of my children, doing my afternoon Mom-Schlep and I allowed my mind to wander.
My mind wandered to my soul collage card from yesterday to Women and Leadership.
I had recently decided to leap into the discovery of current women in politics, especially those beyond the United States. I was an international relations major but somehow I had gotten way out of touch with the political world, especially on an international level.
One conversation knocked on my heart and helped me break through the inertia.
Last weekend I created a soul collage card that to me called me to personal leadership as well as the study of women leaders. I quickly discovered Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany.
I confess, I had never even heard of Angela Merkel until yesterday. Now, I am deep into a study of Merkel and other top women leaders. The Forbes list for 2011 includes two powerful wives, a handful of politicians and a smattering of business women.
This made me feel very uncomfortable. It made me feel squirmy in my seat and more than a little bit disappointed in myself. Instead of getting stuck deeper in the quicksand of “my shortcomings” instead I accepted that for the past and now, I have turned the corner into spending more time learning about women leaders so that I may also become a better leader in the work I do.
I may not be the secretary of state, I may not be the head of a multinational corporation worth billions, but I do serve on several educational committees and I run successful Writing Camp programs and am in the midst of raising three phenomenal human beings.
My discontent of today, my squirmy ickiness isn’t holding me back any more, my vision of being a better leader is pulling me forward.
What will you do, today, to become a more engaged, educated leader?
This may be as simple as a shift in thinking or a quick google search on a woman who intrigues you. Allow your vision of yourself as a better leader pull you forward. The discontent is the nudge and the vision is what gives you wings.
This is post #18/31 for the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Slowly and surely I am getting caught up!
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -
I never knew my cell phone would become such an important part of my life. I thought I would be texting and searching the internet, catching up on facebook and twitter and other fun, playful aps, but I didn't realize it would actually help me with so many of my writing adventures.
Here are ten ways you may use your cell phone as I do for writing purposes. Try one of these you don't currently use and please comment to share either a new way we may all use our phones OR let us know how you experiment with these ten ways to use your smart phone.
10 Ways to Use Your Phone to Write Articles, Top 10 Lists, How-to's, Poetry and More
Listen to conversation being spoken around you. Eavesdrop to capture rich/true dialogue
Take photos, especially those surprise images to write about later. Once you set the intention to be surprised visually, your eyes will begin to see more and more intriguing sights.
Collect "jots" of writing in three words or less... what you see, hear, smell, taste, touch, feel emotionally
Use your timer: Do timed stream of consciousness writing at any time in any space. Do timed writing with your notebook while on a hike. Do timed writing on your laptop sitting in a coffee shop. Do timed writing directly into your smart phone.
Keep a one sentence journal. At the end of the day, write a one sentence summary of either the entire day or whatever stand out event happened, even if it is “The intersection at Stockdale and California was more annoying than infomercials as I drove through it fourteen times today.”
Haiku everywhere and then tweet what you write from your smart phone. You may want to make one day a week your haiku day or make it a practice to see the normal differently – such as writing the dawn every day for a week or month.
In your calendar note times (and set alarms!) for sunrises, sunsets or other "time attached" subjects. For example, an older slightly battered truck rolls by my house at about 6:40 a.m. daily. I consciously make a point to be out there so I can wave as I take notes. This truck and its driver has become a rich part of my writing life and we have never officially met.
Take notes when people think you are texting. I recently did this at a birthday party where I didn’t know anyone. Since people are used to texting, in some circles this isn’t seen as rude. Be careful to not be totally oblivious to social nuances. Interaction at the party itself will also give you gems you can capture as you sit in your car before leaving or on the bus on the way home after the party is over.
9. Create writing prompts from what you see. There is never, ever, ever “nothing to write about.” Look around as you live. Examples: “The waitress with the very red lipstick reminds me of…” and write, using your timer, for at least five minutes stream of consciousness style. “The fallen tree on the side of the road made me feel…”. “The old man waiting at the bus stop looked….” Or “I wonder where the old man at the bus stop is going? It could be…. Or… or… and why isn’t someone from his family driving him?”
10. Write how-to articles. What technology do you suppose I used to write this one?
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -
This blog post had its genesis in two places: The Bloggy Moms Blog Dare who provided the prompt: "Don't let it bother you" and the Ultimate Blog Challenge, which reminds me daily I need to keep writing blog posts to keep up with the challenge. I am several posts behind right now, but I have committed myself to write write write for the next two days with the intention of being ahead by the time I go to sleep tomorrow night.
Yesterday in the Mommy Blog Darel, I wrote from a prompt that said, "Don't let it bother you." You may read my blog post here.
I took inspiration from this paragraph of stream of consciousness, free flow writing from that blog post and came up with a new line of content:
Don’t let it bother you because the bother lasts so much longer than the originating choice and follow through did. Make reparations. Smile. Breathe deeply and aim for now and your next nows.
How often do you make choices you wish you hadn’t made?
There are days when I make not so great choices which have a domino effect: one bad choice after another bad choice after another bad choice.
There are days – weeks, perhaps, when my choices all seem to follow my life intentions: from the clothes I choose to the toothpaste I buy to which item on my to-do list I decide to do first to how I create my schedule. I hum along life based on the right choices until one of those other sort of days, The Domino Days, catch up with me.
I could call those days curses and I could call those days paths to higher learning.
It is up to me to choose how to label them.
What do you think?
Could they be curses which lead to higher paths of learning?
Are they curses?
Are they paths of learning?
Are they just days in a long course of the other 364 (or 365) days in a year?
Consider which of these suggestions rings true for you. I know I tend to the “path of learning” idea and the “just days in a course of other days” concept.
You may know people whose idea is widely divergent from yours. Two of my closest friends would immediately label themselves and the day cursed.
Instead of shaking my head at them or putting my head in my hands in frustration, I give them space to work it out for themselves. What usually happens is they end up laughing about their initial assertion of the day and themselves being cursed.
Instead of me prescribing their shift, I stay beside them, perhaps gently questioning with something like, “What makes you say that” or “tell me more about how you see this day as cursed” and patiently follow up perhaps with silence or with no language sounds requesting more – mmm hmmms or ohhhhs or smiles.
You may eventually do a Scarlet impression complete with southern belle accent, “Well, you do know tomorrow is another day!” or you may let them say the first laughable line.
Choose to make space for your friends or family members who see it differently than you do.
That alone turns a “cursed” day into a blessed day.
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -
Are you ready to write from a prompt unlike any you have ever written from in the past? It is different because it is a sight of nature unseen by so many until now.
Your prompt is twofold: a still photo and a video.
Set your timer for either five, ten or 15 minutes.
Look at the photo.
Watch the Video.
Write from your senses using one or all of these prompts:
I see
I hear
I smell
I taste
I touch
I feel (as in emotion)
Just move your fingers on the keyboard, stream of consciousness style, across the keyboard. Don't think, just type. Repeat the prompt again. I see... I smell... and choose to mix them up if you would like.
There are no rules to writing from this image and this video, just write.
Honor this memory and this experience we now share.
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -
I hear dust from the days before the Vikings falling through the forest. I hear branches, creaking – born before the printing press – being torn from the body that had supported them for so long.
I see confusion.
I see stained glass.
I see awe on the faces of those who look upon her now.
I step into your veins and feel like I am stepping into every cavern I have ever visited. I become one with every nightmare and every pipedream I have ever breathed not into existence.
I feel my breasts fill with milk even though I have not had a baby in eleven years. I feel the urge to feed the babies, the ones who cannot speak or walk for whom there is only hope.
I see Moses’ mother and sister, waiting for safety for their little boy.
I see my mother and sister, giggling as I struggle to slide my feet into my short sheeted bed when I couldn’t translate their giggles and my complete confusion and heart pounding fear to be responding to the same thing.
I touch your protective coating – splintered and your inner coating, smooth. I notice the hands, the others, reaching out, and another other, speaking as if expert but knowing nothing, after all.
I touch inside you with my camera.
I feel miniscule.
I feel incapable to communicate who, what, how you are.
I want to bring people here, to sit with you, to engage with you, to come to know you intimately instead of sitting back and looking at photos or watching videos or thinking they know when they don’t know what it is like to touch the inside of a Sequoia’s bloodstream and suddenly understand how similar you are, only the tree is infinitely wiser and infinitely more capable to communicate even without the benefit of translatable language.
“All afternoon it rained, then
such a power came down from the clouds
on a yellow thread,
as authoritative as God is supposed to be.
When it hit the tree, her body
opened forever.”
In the spring it rained and the stream, as always, moved alongside these twin trees, standing tall like the twin towers had before they fell.
Somehow, they surmise, the life blood of the trees brought death to these two. Like all grief, it isn’t completely understandable yet how it happened. Scientists are in wonder, still now – and don’t logically try to explain it all away.
What I know is the tree and her innards touched me, my mind, my heart, my chest, my fingers, my awe has now opened forever.
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -
This Summer I asked for mothering advice from two famous Hollywood Mothers.
Well, I didn’t ask them mothering advice exactly the way you might think.
These are not, after all, living Hollywood Mothers.
They are legendary Hollywood mothers who are no longer alive.
I took time beside them at monuments in their honor: Donna Reed, the first mother, at her graveside in Westwood and then Joan Crawford, at her Hollywood Walk of Fame star.
Donna Reed’s show was one of my childhood favorites. It was in reruns by the time I watched it. I loved her swishy dresses and pretty face. She reminded me slightly of my own mother, except for the wardrobe. I got older and fell in love with Mary on “It’s a Wonderful Life” via its annual showings during the holiday season.
She seems like someone everywoman would want to chat with about motherhood, about being a woman, and then after the layers of fiction were released, I would want to know about what compelled her as an artist. I might even ask her now, post life, about what she misses about being alive.
Perhaps this is something that compels me as a writer: wanting to know about death and after death. Wanting to know at the end of one’s life as an artist what sifts out as significant. What seemingly small work became what one remembers the most and what “big” project turned meaningless and why – how- where – what was up with that as it happened?
Now Joan Crawford is a completely different mothering story. I wouldn’t even think of asking her mothering advice but something in my gut brought those words to my lips as I cuddled up next to her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last Sunday night.
Yes, as odd as it sounds, I rested on the sidewalk with her star in order to get a compelling photo. I will do almost anything creatively for art or a laugh or both. It was sincered when I heard myself whisper to Joan, “Do you have any motherly advice for me?”
She has become a mothering joke from the “Mommy, Dearest” book and film. “Wire hangers” are legendary because of her disgust for them as they played host to expensive clothing she didn’t feel her daughter, Christina, valued as she should with a more voluptuous, fabric covered hanger.
I wonder how her thoughts would change if she could speak after death. While she was living she said, "Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell."
What would happen once her anger and fear went away?
I poked around online, newly fascinated by these two iconic women. I discovered Donna Reed, who was a mother to four children and a “second mother “ to co-star Shelley Fabares, was also a co-founder of the Peace Activist Organization, “Another Mother for Peace”. Within the group’s beliefs is “No mother is enemy to another mother.”
What would Joan’s life as a mother been like if another mother – another woman – had reached out to her with that sort of compassionate, loving energy of “no enemies here, simply mothers caring about other mothers”?
What would happen once her anger went away?
What got in the way of her freedom from anger?
What can we, as mothers and as women, learn from how she held more tightly to anger and rage than to the love she must have felt underneath all that excess emotional warfare she fought every day.
You may be reading this thinking, “How do these two Hollywood Mothers have any relevance in my life today, anyway?”
Do you know anyone whose anger and fear tear awayen any love in a poisonous fire of contempt that kills any hope of joy they may have within them?
Perhaps this essay was written especially for you so that you may ask the questions to your friend or family member that I posed to non-living beings:
What would happen if your anger went away?
What would happen if you let go of anger and replaced it with something less destructive?
What is getting in the way of your freedom from anger?
Donna Reed might tell Joan Crawford, “When you handle yourself, use your head; when you handle others, use your heart."
When you handle your children, use your head, your heart and your arms for hugging.
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
Did you enjoyed this essay? Receive emails directly to your inbox for Free from Julie Jordan Scott via the Daily Passion Activator. One inspirational essay and poem (almost) every week day. Subscribe here now -
I decided I wanted to try something new this week, so when I saw this last Friday I knew this Friday would be magical: On Fridays a group of folk meet for a free writing exercise. Just 5 minutes. On the prompt that’s posted here just after midnight early Friday morning. Want to join our favorite free writing exercise of the week? It’s easy peasy:
1. Write for 5 minutes flat on the prompt: “Dance” with no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking. 2. Link back here and invite others to join in. 3. And then absolutely, no ifs, ands or buts about it, you need to visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments. Seriously. That is, like, the rule. And the fun. And the heart of this community..
OK, are you ready? Please give me your best five minutes on: (added by me -- and here is where I got confused)
STORY
What? Is this real? I read somewhere the prompt was DANCE so I wrote five minutes on DANCE and now, after being confused, I see that I am wearing exactly the wrong word outfit.
I am not going back. I am simply adding.
The prompt this week, my first week at this Five Minute Friday is… STORY.
Story. I’ve wasted a minute writing about not getting things right and feeling embarrassed about dressing totally wrong for this party.
I could write about my championships at two Story Slam events here in Bakersfield but still harboring fear about going to “The Show” – the major leagues of Story Slamming in a big city where exceptional story tellers live.
I could write about sitting around the campfire with my Dad telling stories. He was such a word weaver. He even had me convinced (and proudly telling people) I was an ancestor of the great mystical poet and artist, William Blake.
That filled in the missing pieces of my story “Where in my bloodstream-ancestry was Writing Bug flowing?”
Until about five years ago, I would’ve sworn it was from my fabulous ancestor, William Blake. Apparently my grandmother thought this was a funny joke to tell because according to actual historical records we are related to a farmer from Iowa also named William Blake.
Here’s another real story.
I get angry when “story” gets a bad name. Some people use “story” like an epithet. That gets me fired up. Like poet Muriel Rukeyser (who I am pretty sure I am not related to at all) said, “The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.”
Today’s story: So I wrote on the wrong topic today. Big deal. The world will not spontaneously combust and these writers seem as if they will enjoy hearing my voice, anyway.
With that said, here are my first five minutes:
I am an actor who loves doing Musical Theater and I rarely get the chance. There just aren’t many roles out there for overweight, middle aged, decent but not Disney-esque singers who don’t dance very well. Well, the dancing chapter of the story is more like: who works really hard and when she gets it she gets it but until she gets it, she is the saddest dancing story you have ever seen.”
Yes, it is something like that.
The last time I appeared in a musical, I had a fantastic time working on a show most of the rest of the cast abhorred. I was so thrilled I practically levitated after each rehearsal.
I worried about dance rehearsals but I have adored our choreographer for years. He is the one person on the planet who believes in my dancing enough to smile patiently at me and simply ask me to try again, which I do. I videotaped the dances so I could rehearse at home. I was serious about this task at hand.
Like in all performance, I wanted to do well.
I didn’t want to be just passable or, without enough rehearsal, an embarrassment.
I wanted to dance along with my three other stage sisters who were at least twenty five or more years younger than me, did I mention that?
I took a Zumba class a while back and had so much fun I cried. I didn’t realize it, though, until the ending when we did cool down. Zumba itself exhausted me. I somehow kept up, sort of, but at the end when we did stretching and soft, gentle movements, a message came from somewhere deep in my heart, “I want to dance, oh, how I want to dance.”
True tears popped out from my eyes, unexpectedly. Now I was covered in salt water: ridiculous volumes of sweat and tears, involuntarily flowing from my face.
I even have the joy right now of being the Emcee for a local burlesque troupe. I tell silly jokes and stories when they get changed or prepare for their next number. I didn’t realize how much fun it could be. It also made me want to be out there, dancing.
Maybe next year.
Maybe if I do more zumba classes – which, by the way, use actual dance moves.
Maybe if I can gather confidence from the soles of my feet to the top of my head and then back to the depths of my heart where courage to do crazy things like this lives – in fact rules – choice making.
I think I’ll do it. I’ll put it on my “to do before August 2013” and I will start aiming toward it.
Me, dancing. Again. With Confidence.
What a phenomenal thought!
5 Minutes UP!
PS - As I prepared to post this blog entry, I saw LAST week's topic was Dance. Ah, well.
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.
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