Rarely do the best DIY ideas come from my left brain alone.
Today I hit a block with my writing so I went to my backyard
studio to work on my bookshelves. I made forward progress on one, whose detail
is musical shelves. I was excited about how it was looking but my other shelf
stood there looking rather unloved. All she wanted was to be sanded. So I
did. The bookshelf seemed to let out a
sigh of relief. I smiled as I heard in my mind’s ear an idea of what to do with
her exterior.
I am new to the DIY/Upcycling world of taking a used and
not-so-lovely piece of furniture and turning it into individualized, functional
art. I like to use the upcycling concept in my small works of art – but when I
found myself running out of space to put both my art supplies, my books and my
works-in-progress, I knew something had to give.
I enjoyed the heck out of my first creation and I got lots
of praise for it.
Now I am working on a couple bookshelves for my living room
as well as just finishing up some ladder/shelves for both my home but also for
art shows. I see my ladders as a moveable, unique shelf system easily
transportable even if it is only me doing the moving around.
I do DIY projects because I enjoy them, but I certainly
don’t feel expert at it yet.
I have discovered, though, as I get more comfortable with
them they have started to “communicate” with me, as if they are letting me know
what might be the best finishing touches for them. This is actually my favorite
part of the process thus far.
This sort of thing has been going on in my writing for
years. You know, those moments of huffing and complaining about “nothing to
write about” when kablooey, my pencil gets pulled into the direction of a story
screaming, pleading and begging, “Write me!”
The momentum of letting go of my preconceptions and giving
the “canvas” more freedom also means I can’t wait to finish and show you (as
well as other friends) what I have been working on lately.
I have a feeling by the end of the weekend you’ll have more
furniture to look at, which is good, because there are other stacked up
projects waiting for my attention, too.
In what ways do you give your creative projects in control
of your process?
I don’t like to be the bearer of bad news, but while you are on your blissful vacation getaway with your family, there will be tension. There will be crankyness. There will be botched communication.
If you are roadtripping, you will miscalculate miles. You may not stay at the hotel you planned to stay in and if you couchsurf like we do, you may have to write to your planned hosts and say, “Sorry, we can’t come stay with you after all.
Believe it or not, hosts look forward to having couchsurfing guests, even rag tag lots like us. I am chronically afraid of disappointing people.
It wasn’t daily but it was near daily when we were going from nature spot to nature spot that Emma verbally lashed out at me for making her attend this worst ever family vacation and why do we go on these stupid vacations because we always end up hating each other.
I listened, I agreed with most of what she said, but I had to deny the hating each other part.
Yes, it wasn’t her idea of nirvana like it was my idea of nirvana, but we will remember certain things until the end of time. Things like Samuel’s silent but deadly farts that were so bad, we had to roll down our windows to keep from coughing “to death” Katherine would shriek, “Samuel, you are killing us!”
This, naturally, would make Samuel laugh, howl and fart more.
He is eleven. I think we will have many years in the future of Samuel farting when the roadside gets uninteresting to him. He can fart and entertain himself by making his sisters scream and then laugh hysterically. He is the star!
I like to think (delude myself?) I have raised my children to be healthy by nature of allowing them to speak up about how they are feeling. I come from a long line of WASPy people who don’t believe in emotions and certainly don’t believe in airing their emotions to anyone unless they are happy, content or an accomplishment laundry list.
I allow Emma to complain. I allow Samuel to fart. I allow Samuel’s rituals to stay intact as much as I can.
I allow them to see ME have a rough time.
Traveling alone with three children – even when one of them is twenty-years-old – isn’t easy.
Tomorrow I will share with you my biggest secret trick that helped make this entire trip happier for each of us. It is a secret trick you can easily replicate. I can see you smiling from here –
Now, just watch out for those silent by deadly gas emissions.
And know that if your daughter is upset, let her say it and then watch the venom dissipate. If you insist she hold it in, your vacation will quickly go further downhill.
Happy Travels!
Writing Challenge:
Tell about a time when you were cranky and lived to tell the tale. What solutions did you find? Please share your stories with us!
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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It was tricky, planning this adventure in National Parks (and in some cases Monuments or State Parks) to try to keep each of my children happy and engaged.
Emma, my almost fifteen-year-old, has no qualms about complaining daily about how miserable she was and how much she would rather be home.
I was ready to just shelve the rest of the trip after we visited The Arches in Utah simply because she and Samuel were so miserable. Not only did I feel selfish, I felt like all my adventuring was pretty pointless if half the group felt like our road trip was akin to getting a root canal without any pain medication.
When I made this proclamation - "We'll just go home now, I know you aren't enjoying this stuff and it was organized by me to visit places I would enjoy" to our traveling band of warriors, I wasn’t expecting Katherine to break down in tears. Like me, she had wanted to visit Zion National Park for a long time AND she wanted to complete the tail end of the trip in Laughlin, Nevada, which is a traditional quirky stopping point for our family.
I think Emma and Samuel were surprised, too. Katherine doesn’t usually emote that strongly, she usually takes everything in stride.
I thanked her for sticking up for herself because I have a weakness in that area, obviously.
We headed out that morning with a fairly clean canvas. Before heading West to Zion, we decided to go to a place we hadn’t heard about until the evening before at a coffee shop/truck stop establishment in the town of Green River, Utah.
I had done a google search about this town and quickly fell in love with it for several reasons. They were like a town that refused to die. It refused to give up. It was proud and willing to do whatever it would take to keep going, even with some crumbling infrastructure and buildings that might have been quickly condemned and torn down in other spaces, plucky little Green River kept going.
Our waitress, Miranda, explained how to get to the Crystal Geyser, a rare cold water geyser. “I was there last night,” she said. “It is pretty out there…” she paused… “well, I think its pretty.”
Being from Bakersfield and seeing what Utah had offered so far, we agreed to travel along a questionable dirt road for seven miles to see the geyser up close and personal.
What seemed ridiculous on that seven mile drive turned out to be Emma’s favorite destination on the trip – until we got to outlet stores and Vegas, naturally.
There was no one else at the remote spot which gave it an otherworldly quality beyond the strange orangey rock surrounding the geyser. Each child got up close and personal with the spout, which was rusted and dingy yet also oddly beautiful.
We spent time just sitting near the geyser, checking it out, wishing it would have one of its twice daily eruptions while we meandered along its edges.
It didn’t.
And we didn’t even mind that it didn’t.
It was a space where we were able to reconnect with each other and enjoy the moment in this odd oasis, each of us, for our own personal reasons.
“I have never seen anything like this in my whole life,” Emma said.
Katherine took a wide armed siesta on the bed the orange rock surface.
Samuel investigated what happened with different weights and sizes of rocks when you tossed them into the water. There were either big bubbles, little bubbles, loud burps or virtually nothing dependent upon weight and density of the rock.
I was able to take some cool textural photos as well as photos of my children. It had been a long time since I had taken photos of “nothing” that ended up fascinating me.
Sometimes replenishment comes from famous over-the-top beautiful spaces.
On this day, replenishment came from the quirky, way off the beaten path natural wonder no other travelers seemed to know existed.
I got a nudge just now to type something completely ego centric.
Normally I wouldn’t do that because I like to think I am humble and don’t like to ever suppose anything happens simply for my favor. The nudge is insistent so here it goes:
It almost seemed, in those moments, like the little town of Green River, Utah, existed so that we could repair our relationship to each other and to this journey on that sunny morning.
It didn’t matter if the geyser erupted for us to oooh and ahhh, what mattered was our hearts erupted again as we remembered why we were on this adventure in the first place: because we shared love with each other and wanted to be together.
My children may debate with me about that reason for adventuring, but I am sticking to it.
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 -
Today – August 7, 2012 - met me in the same way a seventh grade girl, Melanie, meets her longtime crush, Joey, on the edge of the dance floor. Unsure, a bit wobbly, and slow to make a move forward, morning and I wondered at first if anything would happen or if I would pull away, refusing to believe our relationship would ever feel the same as it did when Joey and Melanie were in second grade, sitting side by side at desks in Mrs. Anderson’s classroom at Linden Avenue School.
First I poured a cup of coffee.
Second I gathered my notebook and pen and went outside.
Third I drew a random soul collage card.
Fourth, I made myself write.
Looking at the card I wrote, “I have a history of hiding under a blanket of darkness. Divinity clothes me in white when she does my bidding. I sit in the center of paradox: the this and the that, the hovering tightrope slowly unraveling, an awkward unwinnable tug-of-war and the solid cord hung firmly and the confident collaboration, singing songs of cheer upon successful completion.
I notice water droplets of water on the leaves.
Sitting here, moving my pen, being a faithful companion to my writing is key to living my story.
This dress on the little girl is so similar to what my Mom would have made me.
I want to remember Mom meant her dresses as testaments to her love for me which she wasn’t able to translate into the language you spoke and still speak. This doesn’t minimize her love.
I want to remember that earlier this Summer I learned about Wolf Lichen after mistakenly calling it “moss” after all these years.
My Rilke reading earlier was another significant companion:
From Wer seines Lebens viele Widersinne:
She who reconciles the ill matched threads
of her life, and weaves them gratefully
into a single cloth –
it’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration
These reminders pour through my hands onto the page.
I look at the collage card, I look at Rilke’s words, I write: “It feels so grand to sit on my front porch, the gentle wind feels like a zen gardener tending my forehead. Worry erased by house finch.”
Melanie holds Joey with just the right closeness as their slow dance comes to its conclusion.
She can feel his breath against her neck, his hands respectfully above her waist.
She is both naïve and knowing. She is a paradox who is a human truth in the making.
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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This was the first soulcollage card I made last Saturday. I have been haunted by a recent couchsurfer from Austria who was so much more aware of world politics than I. PLUS I am such a reluctant leader… people tend to appoint me leader without me volunteering. The first time this happened was the fourth grade in Girl Scouts. People just look to me as such so it is no accident to know Samuel drew this card for me this morning to study and to live today.
So far today I have written in response:
I am one who leads.
I am one who leads women and men.
I am one who inspired, one who creates a path no one else can fathom yet. I see crowds (comfy ones) in rural villages, in fields of red flowers.
I am one who brings color to the colorless. I am one who believes in the forefront, who stands at the forefront proclaiming joy in each moment.
I am one who asks questions:
Why am I a leader?
Who do I lead?
What purpose does my leadership serve?
Is my leadership making a difference?
Am I making the right decisions?
Are the results of my leadership worth the personal sacrifices I am making?
Deepening questions –
What is this card offering to me?
Courage
Will
Support
Inspiration
What does this card want or need from me?
Learn more about current women leaders in politics, business and the arts. Continue to learn about grandmothers of the arts. You know how to spread passion, now spread it.
Are there any other messages from the card?
You can, Julie, my love, you can!
Speaking as if I am the image:
I chose the woman leading the march with the flag and the blue binder in her arms.
Many of the times I head out the door to lead, I am afraid. I know the cause is bigger than my fear and there are lives that will be changed under my leadership. This makes me move. It makes me conspire with myself (my heart?) to reach deeper, higher, further.
I look at each person with that same strength and conviction in my eyes: women leaders will change the world by mothering it differently than other leaders have. Yes, I said mothering the world.
Current leaders to study now:
German Chancellor: Angela Merkel
From Finland: Heidi Anneli Hautala was appointed as the Minister for International Development to the Finnish government in June 2011. Shedeals with the ministry’s development cooperation affairs and the government’s ownership steering within the Prime Minister’s Office.
Hautala has been referred as the Grand Lady of Finnish Human Rights politics. She is a former member of the European Parliament and the chairwoman of the parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights. She was in charge of European Parliament’s human rights policy in external relations. She believes in furthering human rights, transparency, environmental responsibility and global justice. During the past years Heidi Hautala has been known as a versatile, active and fearless politician internationally and in Finland, where she has been a household name for two decades.
It is no accident you are reading this today. Sure, it is my card and my intuitive listening that gave my responses.
How do you connect with the card and with what I have written?
So there we have it: Soul Assignment Accepted on July 25, 2012
This is post #16/31 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.
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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 was so pleased to discover SOCSunday lives on! I don’t like what I wrote but it is better than not writing at all. Remember, this is Stream of Consciousness so no editorial grumbling allowed.
Our optional prompt (which I followed) is.....
What does Summer smell or taste like to you? And why?
Your five minutes starts now!
Summer smells like… the mornings smell like optimism. Breezy, with a soft kiss and the reminder that every day is a new beginning.
Summer tastes like mint chip ice cream with chocolate sauce (instead of dinner when the thought of cooking makes your skin sweat… just the thought of it!)
Summer afternoons smell like gym shoes. Pungent. Tired. A bit discouraged.
Summer afternoons smell like my van’s airconditioning, magnolia trees and Samuel at the end of the day, sometimes French fries.
Summer evenings smell like rain, even when its try, perhaps by sure will or delusion or “Must I live through another dry over 100 degree day?”
Summer evenings taste like salty hot pretzels.
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I am glad the SOCSunday lives on. I enjoy knowing we are still out here, writing, without thinking, just writing and bonding and reaching out, even though I think this is my lousiest SOC Sunday post ever. :-(
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This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…
Set a timer and write for 5 minutes.
Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post. (get it over in my sidebar)
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 -
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