So, I don't know how this happened, but I have boxed myself into moving tomorrow. All of my stuff save a few things are in my new place, including furniture from Ikea, Housing Works (A NYC-based thrift store (Brits: charity shop) that focuses on helping homeless people with AIDS - they have amazing stuff donated and I got a gorgeous desk and sofa from them - just amazing - hint to NYC folks: the East 77th Street store is the best one - donations are kind of incredible) and the generous folks that make up Freecycle (the virtual version of leaving stuff out on the curb - if you don't know about it, check it out - it exists in London and NYC and all over)...plus an embarrassing amount of Stuff (pots, pans, pillows, sheets, kitchen stuff, bathroom towels, shower curtain, bath mat and Whatnot) from Home Goods, a discount place that carries mostly designer stuff but on deep discount. Home Goods is like crack when you have to furnish a place from scratch and don't want everything to look like it came from the local Dollar Store (which by the way is furnishing the whole rest of my house with excellent and dirt cheap stoneware and kitchen/bathroom/trash can/dish rack, ladder, etc...stuff)
The other major contributor to my new place are the folks at Home Depot...air conditioners, bamboo blinds, curtains and lamps...to be delivered tomorrow...
The furniture all arrived (thank you...Finally...Ikea) and assembled, some by friends and me and other stuff with drawers by two nice men from a place aptly called StressLess...a good deal New Yorkers if you look at your Ikea needs-to-be-assembled-bed-with-drawers and it makes you cry...call on Alex at StressLess and let him send you his helpful young men.
As you can see from the above, I have devolved into the land of Thrifty Martha Stewart...Thrifty in that I am doing this for bargain basement prices but Martha Stewart because I am choosing each and every item that gets into my new place and most of it, aside from the amazing rocking chair from Freecycle, is something I've needed to buy.
But what I wanted to say tonight is: I am spending my last night in the sublet that I have called home since October 1, 2011 and that seems weird. The reason there needs to be a firm date is that my cat is involved. When he moves, I move and tomorrow is the day my friend Nathan can help me move my more delicate stuff, which includes Ugo the Cat and of course, well, me. I can't keep wiffle waffling back and forth between the two place.
My desk is still set up here. I spent all afternoon wandering around Hunter figuring out what had happened to my appointment certification so I can get paid once I start teaching next week, getting my syllabus printed out and envying those who have full time teaching gigs so they get paid for all that time.
On the other hand, I don't need to go to staff meetings, so there is that.
Also, once I am finally set up, and my study is up and running, I am going to have the Precious Time I need/want to write. Also SPACE. I devoted a whole room to be my study and made the other room a combo bed-living room. All of my books will be on one wall, desk (gorgeous Norwegian mid-century) on another and a plywood/filing cabinet (Freecycle/friend donation) combo as another work surface. A great chair and the aforementioned rocking chair. Oh and a drawer system (thanks Ikea) for all my research materials. So now if I don't finish the book, I'm just an asshole.
So, of course, now I am fucking terrified...of moving, of writing, of having what I want, think I want, do I want it? What the fuck....?! Etc.
I fully expect to be sitting among all the unpacked boxes in the office crying my eyes out tomorrow night and assuming I've made a terrible, terrible mistake.
Which is why it's cool that the day after that I have a meeting to go to with lots of folks like me who come from similar backgrounds and can talk of such things and get the love and support I really, really need right now...not to mention the Courage to just walk through this.
Now, many of you don't know this, but most of the comments left on my blog at times like this, signed in cryptic ways were from my stepfather, Tom. The one who died in June. At times like this I feel his loss so acutely. This is the moment he would smile or say something encouraging and tell me I wasn't a fruitcake for trusting myself and my sense of a Higher Power (I hate that word but all the words are so loaded...maybe I will steal another friend's word for this, which is simply: Grace). And I can trust the feeling I am being held, taken care of and will be OK.
Of course I see him and hear him anyway, Tom that is, and in some ways even more so now, kind of like when my grandmother Jani died back in 1980...which is right around the time Tom came into our lives. These are powerful times when a beloved person dies, sacred times...listening to the divining rods as much as possible...sometimes well and other times, not so sure.
Not sure of much of anything anymore, a symptom of ageing I suppose...maturity? Maybe or just getting the crap beaten out of you by life and realizing: oh, duh, it's not My Show...something like that.
So, goodbye sublet, you have served me well...and it's now time to take ownership of my big, beautiful, sunny one bedroom that is on the 5th floor of a walk up so I never have to join a gym, like, ever.
Wish Ugo the Cat and me luck, I'm scared shitless....like usual.
Welcome to my blog..
"We struggle with dream figures and our blows fall on living faces." Maurice Merleau-Ponty
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...
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Both Tom and Genesha are watching and knowing that it's ALL GOOD!! Mom with you, too...
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