Last night, I attended a local lecturer series and the speaker was Julia Powell, the author of the best-selling novel and motion picture Julie and Julia. My mom and I got a front seat at The Scranton Cultural Center to catch all of the action! My friend and fellow blogger Christina posted a great vignette of the evening and her lecture, check it out on her blog.
Here is my mom, Julie and I with our freshly signed books!
What I find interesting is that what Christina took away from the night was slightly different than what I took away from it. See Julie said she started the cooking project to find herself. She was unhappy and unfulfilled, and this was an outlet for pleasure and excitement. I thought to myself, wow, you have to be pretty passionate and have a strong sense of endurance to want to cook over 500 of Julia Child’s recipes in one year.
To me, passion and endurance is what she stood for. There is also a sense of craziness (which she openly admitted with pride) and a fire for creativity. And towards the end of the evening, I found myself thinking about passion and endurance. I am so passionate about the sense of smell and it’s power to transform us. I also believe that endurance is something that you must possess to be successful in your own business. You have to be able to work through the late nights, the questions and uncertainties and get up the next morning and start it all over again.
In that night, Julie Powell insprired many women of NEPA and you could see that we were all thinking to ourselves. We laughed, because she was funny, but we were all thinking. It is just something women do.
I was thinking to myself, that someday, I will have a book tour and maybe a movie. I know those are very strong goals, but if you know me, I am the type of person that always has strong goals and will do what it takes to get there; or at least close to there 
See, I have wanted to be an author since I was a young girl. I love journaling and have 3 journals in the works right now. They are all very different but somehow are the same. The topics are widespread, but the content is my life, just seen through different lenses.
Writing is the place that I go to find solace. To be my myself; unguarded, real, emotional and cleansed. I write, mostly at night, when the world is still, at least for a moment. My writings are private and sacred, but I do hope to share them in the near future. So for me, Julie’s lecture was about having passion, finding your place of solace and embracing endurance for something that makes you feel good.
Scents and aromas make me feel good and so does writing. So after the night, I went home and started to read her new book, Cleaving, A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession and after 30 pages, I said to myself, “this is saucy, unexpected and looks like it is going to be an interesting read.”
*Support your local bookstore, I bought mine at Anthology in Scranton. And you can get a sneak peek at it on Amazon, just click on the image above.
So today, I thank my mom for always being my partner and best friend, I thank Christina for writing a great blog, I thank Julie Powell for a lecture that inspired me and I thank the Lord for the gifts and blessings he has brought to my life. May everyone have a beautiful, passionate and creative day!
p.s. To read more about Julie Powell, check out her blog.
Our sense of smell is handled by the same part of the brain (the limbic system) that controls memories and emotions. So when we take in a smell, if it has a scent memory (many smells do not), it triggers the limbic system of the brain to connect us to that memory and elicit the connected emotion.