I wrote this the day before we started and I originally thought it was awful (Note the comment that says with one minute to go what can I salvage?) Interesting because now, two days later I'm thinking - wait - there is some good stuff here... which is often how #5for5BrainDump works and is in fact, part of its most potent power.
“Consider everything an experiment.” Corita Kent A few things about me: I love to play. And I love to do things for the sake of experience rather than success. Sure, I want to succeed in what I do, doesn’t everyone want to succeed? More importantly for me, though, is I want to experience. I want to experience. The music in my headset swelled when I wrote the first “I want to experience.” A divine message? Affirmation? Experience is paramount to…. Conventional norms and sensations like bank accounts overflowing and multiple real estate holdings… Maybe the lack of self-esteem is good for detachment. I’ve never felt like I deserved much of anything so it isn’t like I thought having all that stuff meant anything more than a mindless, somewhat worthless collection of do-dads and don’t dads. In my case, mostly don’t dads. When I look at things as an experiment, I am able to experience highs and lows without flinching. I can pretty much take hits as… This is sucking how much more time is left? What can I salvage in a minute. When I consider everything an experiment, boundaries drop away and miracles are suddenly possible. I don’t become needlessly worried or panicked about something going my way because there literally is no specific way. The experiment will flow and I will watch and learn and participate happily. And the timer I used, itself an experiment, pierced the innards of my ears so I literally leaped a bit.
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My audacious goal. My beloved vision. My soulful, beloved dream.
I give myself the gift of five minutes to write about my audacious goals, my beloved vision and my soulful beloved…. Dream, hope, ambition. I will keep my fingers moving, I will not answer the texts coming in, I will not stray off the writing path for five minutes which is such a small amount of time but is so easy to go astray. Stay my love. Stay. My audacious soul goals come close. I can feel them surrounding me. They are the people who will be reached by what I am consciously creating. Word-love. I’ve long wanted to start a publishing company. A sustainable publishing company that supports writers whose voices deserve to be heard, voices that make the world a more joyful, loving, accepting, nurturing place. That’s why I create experiences, after all, so that I may nurture and love writers into being – so that people who have an urge and a message underneath all the barriers and blocks may rediscover their messages and together, we may birth them. Through books and broadcasts and connections with other people – Art. Theater. Whatever medium that particular person is called or compelled to and even that changes, even that morphs and moves and flexes. Who thought I would enjoy livestreaming – she – who – doesn’t – sit – still – t- - watch – videos people send me. I will watch my friends because I love my friends, I connect with them. In theater the audience is a part of it (why I love livestreaming and need to practice to love youtube and I’m getting there.) So back to my audacious, beloved, soulful goal. This is the world, who is clamoring for me exactly as I am. I am love, personified. My words are light in a sometimes dark alley. I write. I share. I show up scarred and disjointed and so imperfect I’ve lost count of my imperfections. I show up anyway as I hope others will when they see I do. I write. I have five minutes to say something normal. The timer goes off and I don’t think this qualifies as normal and today, it works. (I think I'll go for a walk someplace pretty and try this again.) 9/28/2017 0 Comments Let's Focus on Our Strengths
This morning's prompt lead to a twisting, turning collection of words, some which are quite potent and will be crafted into a retelling: especially that opening statement. I have grappled long and hard with that reality of my life AND I have never connected it to my business building. The more I travel along this journey of picking myself up after falling down, the more closely related I believe the two are indeed. Also, this post will be slightly different because I will include the replay before the writing rather than the other way around. Always playing!
When I focus on my strengths, I remember.
The world chose me. My parents didn’t. I need to remember to choose the world, to love the world back. Actually, loving is a strength. Loving random strangers and complimenting the good about them is a strength. It is an uncanny knack I have, to be a witness to greatness within whomever crosses my path even my wacked out neighbors this morning. Driving home after dropping Samuel I smiled and laughed to myself about the yellow cup atop my neighbor’s long black car that looks like a morticians prom mobile. “I wonder why that plastic yellow cup is on my neighbor’s car?” and I laughed. Choosing laughter is a strength. Conscious word choice, a strength. When I focus on my strengths I am acknowledging I am capable, I am holy, my words and moments are sacred. When I focus on my strengths I remember to reach out to people I love who have been absent from my day-to-day lately. Reach out. Reach in. Reach out. Reach in. Love. This is me, Julie, writing on my laptop that has seen brighter shinier days. This is me, bent knee, straight leg, breathing in and out and in. This is me, listening to some funky indescribable to me music – a guitar? A sitar, a synthesizer surely and a woman’s voice whispering stuff I can’t understand. I think it’s meant to be soulful? This is me, smiling, re-reading my question. This is me, overflowing with ideas, praying the best take root. That is a notepad. That is a pen. This is me across the room from the notepad and pen. These noticings: a strength. 9/27/2017 1 Comment I am choosing to spend more time for..... (and less, as well) #5for5BrainDump - Wednesday
Intriguing because my first thought was "I need to apologize for falling behind time wise... and then I realized no, I have chosen the time I have invested this morning and I will continue to choose...." so here is my five minutes of writing. Following my writing is the broadcast from Periscope. I will also link to my Facebook Writing Camp page because I took things a bit further this morning to fix a technical error and what happened as a result was a lot of fun - oh, and below my writing is the replay of the broadcast AND a photo of Alice-the-Cat in the windowsill, as she was when she tried to distract me!
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Each day during the #5for5BrainDump week I will write to the prompts. Today? Challenging due to insomnia last night. The victory and improvement is I showed up. I am proud of that! Read on for my slightly meandering stream of consciousness today....
How powerful is writing to do lists and gratitude lists every day?
What is something I can improve every day? I know I want to improve on keeping my top 5 + bonus every day. My mini passion project, my passionate possibility there is another way I wanted to say that: oh, darn, can’t remember and this sounds really stupid – like if this was a character it might be that guy I saw this morning playing a cast off banjo on top of the bus shelter. If he wasn’t a cracked out meth head I would have said, “Oh my gosh, that is the most creative use of busker I have ever seen!” In fact, I was half way down deciding he was a great inspiration until I actually started video taping him and realized he was a wreck in reality, but in visual storytelling I loved the guy. I bet he doesn’t have a 5 + 1 Passionate Project list he fills out the day before. Today I have gotten off to an awful start because of my insomnia spell. Here I am, though, back and writing and not catching up but being present. Being present that my schedule is off kilter and not making it or me wrong but instead maintaining focus. It will all work out. It will all work out. I am grateful for these five minutes. Even with such a tiny slice of time, I can calm myself, I can have insights I can move myself forward. I can improve. Daily. Once again, I am waiting for the five minutes to end. Like that bonus: there is another rmessage I am meant to hear. The message: wait for the applause. Trust it is coming. Lean into it and take another breath. Laugh when it comes.
9/25/2017 1 Comment What Does Your Business Believe? Clarity Will Bring Increased.... Everything. #LetsWrite
Each day during the Brain Dump Week, I will write to the prompt as well. This is where I will post my own #5for5BrainDump content in aims of inspiring you to write your own. Let's do this!
Word: Believe
Questions: What does your business believe? How do your actions and plans align with that belief? Sentence Starter: My business believes My action plan for this week aligns like this: Feel free to make variations in these prompts and feel free to share broadcasts, blog posts, images of your notebook, art journaling - all is welcome there are NO WRONGS here! Julie's writing: What makes it so important to know what your business believes? I could go on and on and on about this in almost infinite directions AND I only have five minutes to write right now so I’ll do the best I can. It may get topsy turvy and more crooked than that wild little street in San Francisco AND I’ll do my best to be succinct and simultaneously slightly entertaining. When I take the time to tune into what my business believes, it creates a foundation I can stand on as I share my message and as I serve the remarkable people who show up in front of me seeking what I have to offer. What do I offer? Well, it looks like writing prompts and creativity coaching and livestreams and coaching programs, but more than that I offer a space of clarity, an avenue where people show up and are loved for exactly who they are and together we practice clear, loving, heartful communication that is also strategic and serves the world, especially now when it is so obvious our kind (heart centered entrepreneurs and creatives) provide an even greater blessing to more and more and more people who are feeling stranded and lonely and estranged by the vitriol other people spew. We write from a space of love – and confusion. And when we write through that confusion we find… an element of peace and inspiration. We may have an a-ha and a direction and we may have just a divine note “good going, keep moving, you’re closer!” When I know what my business believes, I can stand strong and as tall as this 5’4 inch me allows. I am so grateful I live in this space and time when I am able to reach out world wide- universe wide – and hold hands with you as together we travel along this road together. My business believes in you, in us, in we – and in my ability to throw words on the page that attract just the right people here. You’re here reading. That’s my proof.
I struggled about writing this because I just felt squirrelly and uncomfortable. Oftentimes I have told people when you’re squirrelly and uncomfortable that just means you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to do and write. . Bottom Line: I’m taking five minutes to write the bottom line – and why you owe it to yourself and the planet to participate in #5for5BrainDump October 30 - November 3. If you discovered something that could help people that they didn’t need to buy anything to do, that they didn’t need specialized training to participate, that they didn’t have to go anywhere or risk anything at all, would you encourage them to show up and join in? I’m not talking about being a lemming and jump into danger, I’m talking about being a visionary and standing strong for what you’ve been speaking up for and what you want to continue creating in a bigger, more potent way.
That’s what happens with #5for5BrainDump over and over and over again. I haven’t run a group event for months yet people are telling me how much the approach and working with my prompts has consistently and continually helped them during these months when I’ve been away, tending to my tender heart and preparing for this final quarter which I feel – and believe – will be positively life changing for me and for you, too. If I don’t swing out with this stuff loud and proud this week, I feel like I am shirking my duties and leaving my gifts unwrapped. (I’ve done that a lot in the past. This is how firmly some of my past hurts became entrenched in me but that’s another story for another time.) I want to encourage you to set aside your beliefs of the past and trust me to come alongside you so that you may finally have a business, mission or cause that matches what you say you want. Alignment: your message, your mission, your business, your abundance, your people, your methods – how would that feel to you? This will be our focus throughout this week – and you will have access to more than you could imagine right now and at the end of the week – well, I sat in church this morning and even though the sun was out, I saw the lights strung across the patio where this make-shift church was meeting. I admired the lights and thought how nice they would look in my backyard and then I thought, “These lights are beautiful whether they are off or on, in the light as well as the darkness, but for so many of us we walk around in the dark and don’t even know it because we are too numb or too scared to take a deep breath and look at what is good and right and true. With #5for5BrainDump it isn’t even painful because you have companions alongside who believe in you. My timer is going off so I need to run but I want to be sure you know. Watch on Periscope - on the App on your device or online here: Watch at JJS Writing Camp on Facebook where I’ll also be broadcasting live – Look here, on this blog, where I will rebroadcast and share prompts daily as well. Please, please, please join me in knowing YOU ARE WORTH IT! The world is waiting for you words. The world is waiting for your greater success. Thank you for being here. I’ll see you October 30 – November 3 It would be so easy to beat myself up.
Goodness knows I have enough practice. Once again I am less than a week to go before our July #5for5BrainDump is starting and once again I haven’t given it, the process and the people waiting for it, the due justice it deserves. I can’t explain it. I don’t want to say laziness though the other obvious option is flat out fear which I don’t like to state because that’s just too easy a fall back. I take another sip of coffee and look out the window instead, wish my kid would apply for some job somewhere and make some money. I always did when I was a kid, I didn’t need nudging and cajoling. It’s a different world now and I need to focus on #5for5BrainDump in these five minutes, not veer off course as is my usual norm. I am ready for the unusual norm. The world is ready for its unusual norm, aren’t we? I cover my hands with my face. I look at an image from a children’s book I cut out to make art with a while back. The girls are upset and turn their backs on each other and are in the beginnings of walking away. They are still close enough to turn and hug each other. “There is still time!” I want to shake them. “Don’t let too much time go by!” And I look in the mirror at my wrinkles and lack of caring about how my ahir looks and I have a broadcast in 27 minutes. “Be authentic” my ass. When I don’t take a minute to care about how I look – when I don’t take a minute to care if the world knows about #5for5BrainDump and how powerful it is, I invite myself to continue the spiral of self-destructive “see? You really do suck” residue. So beloveds reading this – we are starting again this Monday at 11 am with a session on Periscope. I may add other sessions using other platforms, but for now this is the one. I got this blog post written. It took about six minutes. I don’t feel better yet but I know I will. Eventually. Yesterday I discovered a trending hashtag by accident: #IWriteBecause.
I learned an organization started the campaign to connect writers and raise money for Room to Read - See Details and Video's that have been submitted at the Reedsy HQ Link here - Now - here's my 5 minute Brain Dump with video to follow: I write because I have known since I was a little girl the value of stories. I would dictate my stories to my mother, who would tirelessly scribe them and I would copy them, awkwardly, in crayon on construction paper. On road trips I would sit between my brothers in the backseat of our turquoise country squire and write what I now know to be cursive e’s across the page for hours. “I’m writing!” I would sing. I am writing! The page always listens. My pencil never leaves me. Last night I was talking with my love, apologizing for my sometimes habit of writing in my head. I might seem like I am present, but I am writing – practicing word combinations rather than being hurt by what is showing its face around me. Writing has helped me detangle some very unpleasant relationship problems. I write because via words, clarity is found – over and over again. I write because there are many who can’t and my speaking up on their behalf in advocacy makes a difference. So many people won’t or can’t write what needs to be said. I write because it helps me feel more brave. Courage, so important today when fear is so readily accessible and optimism is often elusive. I write because it always makes me feel better than before I started writing: even when I write in five minute chunks or while waiting to visit the doctor or after a yoga session or while sitting by the river. I write because the world is waiting for my words. It is my privilege to provide them. Today's unexpected irony: this morning I happily collected the quote below, felt inspired, wrote an intro, set my timer and promptly got called away by duty and tasks. My mind minions kept attempting to get my attention to write and my taskety task master's kept me focused on whatever was right in front of me. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just a part Here it is, a full eight hours and lots of activities later and I am about to write. “If we see an object as a 'bowl,' it may inhibit seeing it as 'craft,' just as seeing it as 'craft' might inhibit seeing it as 'art.' See first; name later.” Darby Bannard It’s been a long time since I allowed myself the simple luxury of sitting at my table on a Saturday morning, writing. “Too much to do on Saturdays!” I would oft lament, rushing around, my hair flying behind me obviously electrified by my stress thoughts of “too much.” This morning I listen to a dog barking in a far-away back yard. I hear flies buzzing in the sea of fallen mulberries and the sprinklers droplets, attempting to tame – something. I’m reminded of Darby Bannard’s words “If we see an object as a 'bowl,' it may inhibit seeing it as 'craft,' just as seeing it as 'craft' might inhibit seeing it as 'art.' See first; name later.” Saturday morning: what do I see, hear, smell, feel, taste, touch, feel emotionally? Set the timer for 5 minutes and… go. (Eight hours later, I write...) Right outside my front door. Purple splotches in concrete, an annual celebration of life and this year, the most purple splotches I have ever seen in the last twenty-six years. It is a splotch factory yet slightly cleaner and less buzzing with flies than earlier today. I’ve been taking care to not infuriate whatever is left of the good nature of my neighbors who abhor my mulberry tree who is finally, this year, weeping as she is meant to weep. Her limbs sweep to the soil, the grass there the greenest of my lawn. Mulberries are a super food and their juices replenish the tired clay that would be desert was it not for our relentless domestication and insistence we make our yard look like a yard in a more gentle climate. Lavender, her purple compatriot, thrives against my neighbor’s driveway. I think maybe it is time to move some of that into the backyard. It is a haven for bees and we need to treasure and feed and love our bee population. Rosemary, my favorite. My homage to Martha Stewart. I realize I have named everything. I haven’t listened fully to the directions or perhaps it just isn’t deep enough. There are more five minute segments left in which to “do it right” with my writing. I remind myself, “There is no right or wrong, there is simply and purely moving my fingers on the keyboard as I am doing now. When I do this, all becomes nearly instantly right with the world no matter what circumstances attempt to tell me differently. Applause. Job well done. This online timer is my biggest fan. When I get one that includes a standing ovation pop up emoji, I will have truly arrived. |
Julie Jordan Scottis the founder and creator of 5For5BrainDump. She has been inspiring artistic rebirth since 1999. Archives
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