Welcome to my blog..


"We struggle with dream figures and our blows fall on living faces." Maurice Merleau-Ponty

When I started this blog in 2011, I was in a time of transition in my life between many identities - that of Artistic Director of a company (Apocryphal Theatre) to independent writer/director/artist/teacher and also between family identity, as I discover a new family that my grandfather's name change at the request of his boss in WWII hid from view - a huge Hungarian-Slovak contingent I met in 2011. Please note in light of this the irony of the name of my recently-disbanded theatre company. This particular transition probably began in the one month period (Dec. 9, 2009-Jan. 7, 2010) in which I received a PhD, my 20 year old cat died on my father's birthday and then my father, who I barely knew, died too. I was with him when he died and nothing has been the same since. This blog is tracing the more conscious elements of this journey and attempt to fill in the blanks. I'm also writing a book about my grandmothers that features too. I'd be delighted if you joined me. (Please note if you are joining mid-route, that I assume knowledge of earlier posts in later posts, so it may be better to start at the beginning for the all singing, all dancing fun-fair ride.) In October 2011, I moved back NYC after living in London for 8 years and separated from my now ex-husband, which means unless you want your life upended entirely don't start a blog called Somewhere in Transition. In November 2011, I adopted a rescue cat named Ugo. He is lovely. As of January 2012, I began teaching an acting class at Hunter College, which is where one of my grandmothers received a scholarship to study acting, but her parents would not let her go. All things come round…I began to think it may be time to stop thinking of my life in transition when in June 2012 my stepfather Tom suddenly died. Now back in the U.S. for a bit, I notice, too, my writing is more overtly political, no longer concerned about being an expat opining about a country not my own. I moved to my own apartment in August 2012 and am a very happy resident of Inwood on the top tip of Manhattan where the skunks and the egrets roam in the last old growth forest on the island.

I am now transitioning into being married again with a new surname (Barclay-Morton). John is transitioning from Canada to NYC and as of June 2014 has a green card. So transition continues, but now from sad to happy, from loss to love...from a sense of alienation to a sense of being at home in the world.

As of September 2013 I started teaching writing as an adjunct professor at Fordham University, which I have discovered I love with an almost irrational passion. While was blessed for the opportunity, after four years of being an adjunct, the lack of pay combined with heavy work load stopped working, so have transferred this teaching passion to private workshops in NYC and working with writers one on one, which I adore. I will die a happy person if I never have to grade an assignment ever again. As of 2018, I also started leading writing retreats to my beloved Orkney Islands. If you ever want two weeks that will restore your soul and give you time and space to write, get in touch. I am leading two retreats this year in July and September.

I worked full time on the book thanks to a successful crowd-funding campaign in May 2014 and completed it at two residencies at Vermont Studio Center and Wisdom House in summer 2015. I have done some revisions and am shopping it around to agents and publishers now, along with a new book recently completed.

I now work full-time as a freelance writer, writing workshop leader, coach, editor and writing retreat leader. Contact me if you are interested in any of these services.

Not sure when transition ends, if it ever does. As the saying goes, the only difference between a sad ending and a happy ending is where you stop rolling the film.

For professional information, publications, etc., go to my linked in profile and website for Barclay Morton Editorial & Design. My Twitter account is @wilhelminapitfa. You can find me on Facebook under my full name Julia Lee Barclay-Morton. More about my grandmothers' book: The Amazing True Imaginary Autobiography of Dick & Jani

In 2017, I launched a website Our Grandmothers, Our Selves, which has stories about many people's grandmothers. Please check it out. You can also contact me through that site.

In May, I directed my newest play, On the edge of/a cure, and have finally updated my publications list, which now includes an award-winning chapbook of my short-story White shoe lady, which you can find on the sidebar. I also have become a certified yoga instructor in the Kripalu lineage. What a year!

And FINALLY, I have created a website, which I hope you will visit, The Unadapted Ones. I will keep this blog site up, since it is a record of over 8 years of my life, but will eventually be blogging more at the website, so if you want to know what I am up to with my writing, teaching, retreats and so on, the site is the place to check (and to subscribe for updates). After eight years I realized, no, I'm never turning into One Thing. So The Unadapted Ones embraces the multiplicity that comprises whomever I am, which seems to always be shifting. That may in fact be reality for everyone, but will speak for myself here. So, do visit there and thanks for coming here, too. Glad to meet you on the journey...

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Wiley E Coyote looks down....

OK, so now all the things in my life being up in the air is hitting me full force and I'm having the Wiley E Coyote looking down after he's run off the cliff moment.  Just high anxiety, fear, indecision, the works.

Have been going to places I go for sanity's sake with people who experience the world in a similar way, and that has been helpful, but when I am by myself the Fear begins again.  I am really feeling the levels of insecurity and not knowing and it's quite difficult.

Having trouble focusing on anything and then remembering maybe that's OK for right now, but then that causes anxiety and so on.  The final straw was today discovering that the month I am spending in NYC, already booked on a non-refundable ticket, may not be as straightforward as I had hoped, because of some big shifts in plans at that end.  I just frankly don't know how many more changes I can handle.

I am feeling particularly tortured by the question of where to live as in: what country and when that is decided, how to make a living and so on.  There are some options here most likely, so staying here is the safer option, but I'm not sure if I'm going to have an easier time to move back to NYC, in terms of having no commitments in London and so on.

I do realize there is some extreme freedom in this situation for which I should be grateful but cannot help today feeling overwhelmed.  And also very, very sad.

For the record, even my washing machine is sounding tortured right now, and if that breaks I think that may be the end of the last straw of sanity I may be renting out from something like a Higher Power.

So, please anyone reading this, send me prayers for calm and sanity and perhaps clarity, too.  I need help with the simplest stuff right now.

Having said that, I also know I am not in Somalia, not starving to death, but alive and well fed and with no one shooting at me, which means in the end, it's a good day.

That's all I got today.  Hope for more inspiration tomorrow.

But.....Just got an email from my mother that my step-brother has some horrible rash, abdominal pain thing and is in the ER, so it is just relentless, no wonder I feel full of anxiety.  It seems like so many people I am connected to right now are also in tumult.

Plus again with the washing machine....oi.  Note to self: do not risk putting in wash late at night.  Here's hoping the sheets survive.
Posted by at

2 comments:

  1. DaveJuly 22, 2011 at 2:18 AM

    Prayers for calm, sanity, clarity, coming your way right now. Hope you get 'em. (Disclaimer: I might not be the best source of these, but hey, you take what you can get.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Julia Lee Barclay-MortonJuly 22, 2011 at 5:38 AM

    Thanks Dave, prayers received gratefully...as to source, I love Rumi's phrase 'God accepts counterfeit money as real.' For me this has been lucky as I've prayed some days believing and many days not and no matter what, it seems to work. She works in mysterious ways Her wonders to perform...

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)