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, December 28, 2017

Gratitude list (Life's what happens to you while you're busy making other plans)

So, it's been a weird year...for pretty much everyone I know.

There has been a lot of loss (personal and global) and of course insane politics. A lot I had my sights on I did not achieve or thought I had but then didn't (e.g. I was signed by an agent, but it wasn't a good fit, so had to let her go a few months later, so...as of right now, no agent). So, I end the year without an agent and still don't have a publisher for my first book or my recently-completed one (though that process has just begun).

On the other hand, a lot of other really good stuff happened and was accomplished.

As John Lennon sang:

"Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans."

Yeah, that seems about right.


To wit (aka gratitude list):

At this very moment painters are painting our bathroom and kitchen (requested in September).

I still have a roof over my head and food in refrigerator.

Bought some new clothes recently, thanks to Christmas gift.

I'm healthy even if could use to lose a few pounds (shocking, I know).

When I get myself there, I can still do yoga.

I have a nice little office area and a writing studio cooperative I can go to downtown.

My play SHIT was chosen for a play development program at IATI and will be shown in NYC as a staged reading in June.

I finished a new book, two new plays and wrote many blog posts and some articles this year.

I've begun a thus-far successful freelance writing, coaching, teaching and editing business, which I now do full-time, since I was graced with realization I had to leave being an adjunct professor because the pay and conditions were actually abusive. So far, this has been a good decision.

I love coaching and teaching independently, and helping shape writing as an editor and/or writer for individuals and non-profits. I also have discovered a talent for manuscript reviews that are helpful to the authors.

I continue submitting my work, even when it feels like a ten-ton weight. I have gotten some wonderful feedback even when not accepted and encouragement to resubmit. I am glad I have the ability to keep doing this, because the difference between success and failure with writing is the ability to withstand a lot of rejection in the process. Sometimes I feel the resilience and sometimes I don't, but I keep moving forward.

I love my newest play On the edge of/a cure. Not sure where/how to develop it yet, but had fabulous actors come up to my apartment and read it, so I know I need to do something...mulling on that.

The #metoo movement has brought light to dark corners and even if messy and hard, I believe it presages a new world coming. Assuming we can survive the patriarchal death star (not guaranteed). That movement is why I wrote the above play. Dealing head on with issues I've punted for far too long.

I've gotten involved in some political stuff that I think is effective and was one of the many volunteers who helped Doug Jones get elected in Alabama. May this and earlier local 2017 elections be a sign of things to come. Glad to have found a way to be effective and not feel paralyzed.

My newest play being read was one of the things that knocked me out of my paralysis.

The awareness that when I am not writing, I am being written. Therefore making sure I keep writing. No matter what.

A year of being paid to lead a book club. Paid to read a book I have chosen and lead a discussion on it by a group of smart, fabulous women. What a gift.

All of the people who have entrusted me with their writing in workshops, as a coach, an editor or manuscript reviewer.

John finally getting some good news about some issues in Canada, which I can't discuss in detail, but it's good news and a long time coming, will help us move into our future.

20+ years of meditating every day.

My fabulous cat, Ugo.

The love of friends and family, too many to mention, but you know who you are.

With a special shout-out to the friends of Bill and Lois W. that have led me to 30+ years of life with no windshield. The real hard core.

A rent-stabilized apartment in Inwood. (Artist credo: keep your overhead low.)

So many ideas for writing, art and theater projects I don't think I can finish them before I die.

My trip to London and Scotland this summer wherein I reconnected with people and places I love and did revisions on my second book (Girls Meeting God). The Orkney Islands are my spiritual home and had not been there for 7 years.

The fact I am leading a retreat back to Orkney Islands this coming summer that is almost full up.

The discovery of power of crystals (I would be rolling my eyes, too, if I were you, but for real they work).

An excellent yoga teacher.

The wonder of stove top espresso.

A snowy Christmas and ice storm that made the world a crystal palace. (Plus good heating, which made it fun to see from inside.)

Family and friends with whom to memorialize and then spread my stepfather's ashes in Maine and Brooklyn, a hard slog of grief, but mitigated by being shared. Though it still hurts and is an undertow to any joy.

At beginning of year reading excerpts in my grandmothers voices from first book, The Amazing True Imaginary Autobiography of Dick and Jani at Poetry Marathon and Resistor project.

I created and designed a website for stories about other people's grandmothers, which you can contribute to if you want: Our Grandmothers, Our Selves.

A brief but important autumn retreat to finish final edits on Girls Meeting God.

Another play I wrote earlier in the year, Grieving for Dummies. Have not been sure what to do with that one. Maybe need to hear it read. Anyone interested?

Speaking of which, that I live in NYC and so when want to hear a play read, that isn't hard, because so many fabulous people around who are crazy talented and generous.

Inwood and the park, the water, the birds, the old growth forest.

A loving husband.

The people who joined us on the 16th for the holiday gathering for people who find holiday gatherings difficult where  we all talked about what we loved and hated about holidays and tallied up our losses, the difficulty of these during this time of year. The only requirement was no enforced gaiety.

Friends who take care of Ugo when we are gone!

Healthcare - this year anyway. And next. God knows after that.

The many, many people who give a shit and work in mostly thankless and anonymous ways to make sure people do have healthcare and a fairer political/economic environment.

Those who do the invisible work. I see you. I know many of you. You are the reason the damn planet still goes round.

A special shout out to the many, many women of a certain age who I have met over this year who are all supporting each other in ways great and small. The days of quiet desperation are coming to an end. An under the radar network instead is emerging. We are no longer going to walk quietly into the dark night to be rendered useless. Count on it.

Having discovered this year my own personal ocean floor. That which does not move. Hard to describe this, other than that way. I don't know if this happens for others when they are far younger, but for me it was this year. All the turbulence, the depressions, meannesses, joys, awarenesses...are the tide...beneath which is this floor. I get that geologically the ocean floor also moves, but that kind of works, too, because of course I am alive now, in this body and configuration now, and after that, who knows? I don't. But in this iteration, something solid has emerged. It's a touchstone. This happened during a meditation, of course.

When I started writing my grandmothers book, I had asked that I be given a kind of quiet confidence in my own voice, a stability that could not be knocked off course just for the sake of approval or whatever - a discernment of my own. So, even though it's been difficult, I am holding to my vision and this sense of an ocean floor has put a kind of foundation beneath that aspiration. I still have self-doubt of course and it's not that my work is perfect or anything, but it is giving me the strength to not just take advice that feels more like prevailing winds than true for what I am doing. I pray at some point I will find an agent and/or publishers who will also see what and how I see, but that I cannot control.

To all of you who read this blog, I am grateful to you. I don't know many of you, but I know you are out there, because I can see it in the stats. You come from all over the world and are in the thousands.  I hope this writing and accounting of a life lived on the edge of so many worlds in the early years of the 21st Century makes you feel a little less lonely on this planet in our connected/disconnected tiny/huge planet. I hope you feel love and some connection to the blue-green that makes our planet so special and livable. It feels so fragile these days - our lives here anyway - but here we are now. So I embrace you in whatever way I can.

In return, I gift you with my most successful New Year's resolution to date:


There is nothing wrong with you.


(The resolution part is if when considering an issue, it begins with something intrinsically wrong with me, I have to back that train back in the station and reconsider it from the perspective of there not being anything wrong with me. This works beautifully and over the years has led me to places I didn't even know existed within myself creatively and in life.)





2 comments:

  1. Thank you for this blessing.
    May your request for an agent/publisher light up the Universe as a manifestation within your life. You are the light...carry on.
    Blessings....Christine

    ReplyDelete