Rose Jermusyk · Author · added over 8 years ago

NEWS

A slow start to the campaign and I am not discouraged. Most of the lack of movement is that I’ve been doing the writing, but not as much marketing. I’m in a choir and preparing for an evening of tarot readings. December is a busy month.

Actually, that’s just this week which means that after this weekend, guess who’s getting my full attention. You, my dears, and Master Cat.

To help speed things along in terms of getting you out of the weeds of my research and into the first draft trenches, the notes and quotes posted one "portion" at a time prior to last week are going to be grouped together (without creating too long and boring a stream of notes and quotes, I promise).

Step Two: "Research"; UNTIL the cats starts talking, Recognition / Contending / Analysis / Time

Before you read these you should know that I might be in love with psycholinguist Vera John-Steiner. And proceed:

It’s “critical to integrate new information in a manner that does not violate who we are. By taking away our natural voice, we leave ourselves without a sense of gravity to balance us as we navigate countless obstacles along our way.” Josh Waitzkin

“We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired.” Andre Lorde

“Woman must put herself into the text - as into the world and into history - by her own movement.” Helene Cixous

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The ‘gift’ that we often talk about is your ability to learn, and grow, and adapt. And that’s a gift we all are born with.” Jeff Goins

“Coming and going matter far more than what happens in the middle … humans remember the transitions, because it’s the moments of change and possibility and trepidation that light us up.” Seth Godin

“In the course of creative endeavors, artist and scientists join fragments of knowledge into a new unity of understanding. This process is demanding; it calls upon all the inner resources of the individual - active memory, openness to experience, creative intensity, and emotional courage. It demands self-knowledge in a the use of expansion of one’s talents.” Vera John-Steiner, psycholinguist

“Among the invisible tools of creative individuals is their ability to hold on to specific texture of their past. Their skill is akin to that of a rural family who lives through the winter on food stored in their root cellar … The creative use of one’s past, however, requires a memory that is both powerful and selective.” Vera John-Steiner, psycholinguist

“ … memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust’s jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and recategorized with every act of recollection.” Oliver Sacks

Mozart’s “bag of memories"

Old maxim: Know the rules so well, you can break them effectively.

Life is like chess; you learn the rules, you learn the strategies, and then you go to town doing your thing.

Research by the USC Mind & Society Center showed that scheduling goals more than 90 days out increased the level of procrastination on the part of the goal-setters

Rose Jermusyk · Author · added over 8 years ago · 1 like

First some news, then some "Research"

The campaign has been launched! The campaign has been launched! This book is gonna get done, m’dears.

I’ve also been periscoping every day this month for #31DaysOfNarratemes (go ahead and give that hashtag a click when you have a little time) and this afternoon I’ll be wrapping up Propp’s 1st Sphere of narratemes: Introduction.

I was originally worried about going periscope, but that worry has been outweighed by the results! I’m a smashing success? Not in the slightest, but by questing my through December I was able to catch a pretty silly behavior on my part.

Click the hashtag above to catch up and figure out how it saved me from crippling this project, right now I’d like to share the new front and back covers:

AND

That’s all the news, now on to the "research."

Step Two: “Research”; UNTIL the cat starts talking, Aspiration / Specifics / Targeting / Efficiency

Godin is, again, frequently quoted, but a guy named Kellogg had the most to say at any given time.

“The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them.” Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

“Imagine immensities. Pick yourself up from rejection and plow ahead. Don’t compromise. Start now. Start now, every single day."

“Pick your odds, decide what you care about and act accordingly.” Seth Godin

Dr. Gail Matthews, Dominican University CA, discovered people who write down their goals are 42% more likely to achieve those goals.

“When you have to use your energy to put those words down, you are more apt to make them count.” Raymond Chandler

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” E. B. White

“I like things to happen; and if they don’t happen, I like to make them happen.” Winston Churchill

“You don’t have to be great to start, but your have to start to be great.” Zig Ziglar

“Not my circus, not my monkeys.” Polish proverb

“A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” Ssgt. Chad Sommers

“If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.” John L. Beckley

“Piss Poor Planning Promotes Piss Poor Performance.” 7Ps, military adage

“ … environments, schedules, and rituals restructure the writing process and amplify performance … These practices encourage a state of flow rather than one of anxiety or boredom … Moreover, in accordance with encoding specificity, each of these aspects of method may trigger retrieval of ideas, facts, plans, and other relevant knowledge associated with the place, time, or frame of mind selected by the writer for the work.” Ronald T. Kellogg

“When we get the environment right, human will do remarkable things.” Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last

“The lack of interruption in trains of thought may be the critical ingredient in an environment that enables creative flow. As long as a writer can tune out background noise, the decibel level per se may be unimportant. For some writers, the dripping of a faucet may be more disruptive than the bustle of a cafe in the heart of a city.” Ronald T. Kellogg

“The diversity of environments chosen by writers, from Proust’s cork-lined rooms to Sarraute’s Parisian cafe, suggests the flexibility of human thought. A person can think in any environment, though some locations become habitual for certain individuals. The key is to find an environment that allows concentrated absorption in the task and maximum exposure to retrieval cues that release relevant knowledge from long-term memory.” Ronald T. Kellogg

“the only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost.” William Faulkner

“The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.” Seneca

“Reality is never and nowhere more accessible than in the immediate moment of one’s own life. It’s only there that it can be won or lost.” Franz Kafka

“Life is long if you know how to use it.” Seneca

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it mean at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that are there. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” Steve Jobs

“No activity can be successfully pursued by an individual who is preoccupied.” Seneca

Context switching is further proof that multi-tasking isn’t an actual thing (Gerald Weinberg’s Quality Software Management: Systems Thinking). People may think they can jump quickly between tasks without a loss of quality in their output, but chances are they’ve never done a true comparison study of their work in flow versus their work in a “bouncy castle”.

Rose Jermusyk · Author · added over 8 years ago

CORRECTION:

There was a typo in the link I shared in the previous update PLUS the link wasn’t well highlighted. If I hadn’t been the one to make the link, I would have never known there was a link to click.

The link is: https://www.periscope.tv/rosejermusyk

Sorry for the mix-up and thank you for reading.

Rose Jermusyk · Author · added over 8 years ago

First NEWS, Then "Research"

Tonight at midnight I am launching the campaign for this book! By my calculations it will then end on midnight at the close of February 28th.

I was looking over my writing schedule last week - which is progressing ever so nicely - and decided to pound out a quick campaign outline to decide whether the writing and the campaigning should remain separate (clearly I decide against that since I’m launching tonight). I also saw room to challenge myself a little over the course of December and maybe even January and then wrap things up with some surprise goodness in the midst of February.

For the December challenge to myself please follow me on Periscope where I will be posting once a day, every day, for the next 31 days.

All this is to say that I have plans for you, m’dears, just as the cat had plans for the miller’s youngest son.

and now Step Two: "Research"; UNTIL the cat starts talking, Mindset

In this week’s notes-n-quotes Josh Waitzkin (the real life Bobby Fischer) got in way more quotes than Seth Godin and I swear I have no idea how it happened.

“It’s only be being creative that you stimulate creativity.” Richard N. Skinner, Bare Bones of Story

“In performance training, first we learn to flow with whatever comes. Then we learn to use whatever comes to our advantage. Finally, we learn to be completely self-sufficient and create our one earthquakes, so our mental process feeds itself explosive inspirations without the need for outside stimulus.” Josh Waitzkin

“On how one orients himself to the moment, depend the failure the or fruitfulness of it.” Henry Miller

“Everything can be taken from a man, but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Viktor Frankl

“I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. if my name is not on it, I get up.” Benjamin Franklin

“The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity.” Josh Waitzkin on valuing process before results

“It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis.” Henry Miller

“To destroy is always the first step in any creation.” E. E. Cummings

“A key component of high-level learning is cultivating a resilient awareness that is the older, conscious embodiment of a child’s playful obliviousness.” Josh Waitzkin

“Mental toughness is simply your ability to be flexible and adaptable with your strategy and actions, despite what’s happening to you, in the world around you or your circumstances.” Todd Herman

“Modesty is never a qualified substitute for passion.” Ash Ambirge

“Passion can overcome fear - the fear of losing, of failing, of being ridiculed.” Seth Godin

“Scared is what you’re feeling. Brave is what you’re doing.” Emma Donoghue

“You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of mind next to honor.” Aristotle

“To go off the path is to claim responsibility for what happens next.” Seth Godin

“Character - the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life - is the source from which self-respect springs.” Joan Didion

“It’s not a failure until you stop trying.” Debbie Millman

“A self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood.” Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

“The way we saw it, responsibility means that each person has to carry the bell for himself. You, and you alone, must make your decisions, and you must live with them. No one should be thinking for you, and no one should be protecting you from the consequences of your actions. This, we felt, is essential if you want to be independent, self-directed, and the master of your own destiny.” Sudbury Valley School, introductory handbook

Rose Jermusyk · Author · added over 8 years ago

Step Two: "Research" for THEN the youngest son gets stuck

As you know, from my previous posts, research is a tricky step to share so I cherry-picked my favorite notes and quotes from the research I’ve been doing for this book and am sharing those. Last week I thought to also get a jump on sharing the first draft as I’m writing it, but I want the order I’m doing this to be as straightforward to you as it is to me.

Basically, I’ve decided not to share more of the first draft until I’ve finished sharing until I’ve shared all the best notes-n-quotes bits from my research. This week, there’s a fair amount of Seth Godin but less than last time. He’s just so quotable!

“Everyone hustles his life along, and is troubled by a longing for the future and weariness of the present.” Seneca

“If to enjoy even an enjoyable present we must have the assurance of a happy future, we are ‘crying for the moon’.” Alan Watts

“When we are present to what is, we are right up front with the expansion of time, but when we make a mistake and get frozen in what was, a layer of detachment builds. Time goes on and we stop.” Josh Waitzkin

“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future … You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours.” Seneca

“There may be moments in life when we are so unformed that we need to use values like an exoskeleton to keep us from collapsing. But something is very wrong if such moments recur often in adulthood. Trying to live someone else’s life, or to live by an abstract norm, will invariably fail - and may even do great damage.” Parker J. Palmer

“There’s a significant cultural distinction between a high school drop-out and a Yale graduate.” Seth Godin

“When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else … you surrender your own integrity [and] become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.” Eleanor Roosevelt

“If such people want to know how short their lives are, let them reflect how small a portion is their own.” Seneca

“It is inevitable that life will be not just very short, but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil … They don’t look for an end to their misery, but simply change the reason for it.” Seneca

“If you do a good job where someone tells you exactly what to do, he will find someone cheaper than you to do it.” Seth Godin

“There’s only one thing certain. That is one’s own inadequacy.” Franz Kafka

“If you can deny your talents, if you can conceal then from others or, even better, persuade yourself that they weren’t given to you, you’re off the hook.” Seth Godin

“To stand face to face with insecurity is still not to understand it. To understand it, you must not face it but be it.” Alan Watts

“In the case of silence, each of us draws the face of her own fear - fear of contempt, of censure, or some judgment, or recognition, or challenge, of annihilation.” Andre Lorde

“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.” Muhammad Ali

Prolific failure is part of nature - a female salmon will lay anywhere from 1500 to 10,000 eggs at one time and only 10 of those eggs will spawn - and often necessary to find any kind of success. You have to try, to persist again and again until you achieve the desired result and then you must continue to persist because one success does not beget another.

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Mike Tyson

“Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passersby see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney.” Vincent Van Gogh

“What we choose not to do matters.” Seth Godin on the harm of inaction

“One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.” Marie Curie in a letter to her brother

“There is more than one solution to your problem (and your problem is real) … Falling in love with your solution makes it incredibly difficult to see its flaws, to negotiate with people who don’t agree with you, to find an even better solution … The dissatisfaction of inefficiency or wrong direction isn’t going to go away merely because you deny it.” Seth Godin

Rose Jermusyk · Author · added over 8 years ago

Step Two: "Research" for FIRST the miller is dead

Research is a tricky step to share. So I’ve pulled together my favorite notes and quotes from the process to give you an idea of my process. These are the notes and quotes for the first chapter (Seth Godin came up a lot).

The promise of the industrial revolution was progress, moving forward into the future.

“Large-scale education was not developed to motivate kids or to create scholars. It was invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system. Scale was more important than quality, just as it was for most industrialists.” Seth Godin

“If we are to continue to live for the future, and to make the chief work of the mind prediction and calculation, man must eventually become a parasitic appendage to a mass of clockwork.” Alan Watts

“We don’t need more of what schools produce when they’re working as designed.” Seth Godin

“When forced to comply, the smart kid plays along, the stupid one is punished, and neither of them produces much value as a result.” Seth Godin

“As soon as we associate reading a book with taking a test, we’ve missed the point.” Seth Godin

“This test is a test of lower order thinking for the lower order.” Professor Frederick J. Kelly on his invention, the multiple-choice test

“You’re handed the mould and told - fit into this.” Kate Tempest

“If failure is not an option, then neither is success.” Seth Godin

“To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.” Alan Watts

“Everything is pervaded by a fight between network and hierarchy.” Paul Mason, Postcapitalism

“There’s no doubt the ground will shift. The question is: when it does, will you be ready?” Seth Godin

“Education isn’t a problem until it serves as a buffer from the world and a refuge from the risk of failure.” Seth Godin

“We don’t need a human being standing next to us to lecture us on how to find the square root of a number or sharpen an axe.” Seth Godin

“We can teach people to make commitments, to overcome fear, to deal transparently, to initiate, and to plan a course. / We can teach people to desire lifelong learning, to express themselves, and to innovate. / And just as important, it’s vital to acknowledge that we can unteach bravery and creativity and initiative. And that we have been teaching just that.” Seth Godin

“Culture changes to match the economy, and the other way around … The reason so many people grow up to look for a job is that the economy has needed people who would grow up to look for a job.” Seth Godin

“If culture is sufficient to establish what we eat and how we speak and ten thousand other societal norms, why isn’t it able to teach us goal setting and passion and curiosity and the ability to persuade?” Seth Godin

“Society has the resources and the skill (and thus the obligation) to reset cultural norms and to amplify them through schooling.” Seth Godin

Rose Jermusyk · Author · added almost 9 years ago

Hear, ye! Hear, ye!

NaNoWriMo is upon us and I don’t want to write a novel right now, or worry about my word count. I want to put the Puss-in-Boots, and I want to take you along for the ride.

About six months ago I went through the process of breaking down the story into "boring" academic terms. Since then I’ve done a lot of research, a tricky kind of a thing to share. But I’ve pulled together the best quotes from my research/reading to share with you in the coming weeks as I hunker-down to write the book according to the Premise, Overview, and Chapter-by-Chapter Synopsis now available for your perusal.

I’ve learned quite a bit in the past six months, and I’m looking forward to sharing it with you,

Onward!

Rose Jermusyk · Author · added over 9 years ago · 1 like

Step One: Translating the Translated, Part 4

It’s the fourth and final translation post! Today we hit the grounded running as the cat runs ahead of the kings coach through the countryside to tell people they now work for the Marquis de Carabas, but for us it all goes back to sharing your progress.

There’s any number of reasons why it’s good to share your progress as you go. The first is accountability. Chances are your education instilled in you a heightened sense of accountability, to get it done no matter how long you may have procrastinated in the first place.

Part of making accountability - and any habitual procrastination - work for you is how you set your deadlines. Your specific goal should have an overall deadline, but those measurable bits of progress should also heave deadlines. Measurable progress within stepping-stone guidelines, not exact steps.

Exact steps are for when you say to yourself “What needs to be done that I can do right now while i’m in the headspace to work toward me goal?” They’re not for setting weekly progress deadlines. Progress deadlines are there to motivate you to act upon whatever exact steps you think of while you are working (much the same way as waiting till the last minute to get a school paper done suddenly lights a fire under your butt to sit down and actually do the friggin’ writing).

But he doesn’t just stop at one field full of workers, he keeps it up with the next field of workers, and it’s all leading up to his idea of a grand finale.

Another reason to shared you progress is to use the momentum of working and and sharing the project to build up the habit of continuing to work on it in whatever small way you can even when you are not in the flow of the work. Little acts build up and any little progress that gets you to a measurable bit of progress is all your project is asking of you. Your ideas are an extension of yourself, they want what you want; execution.

All you have to do for the world to know that you are real, is to get out of your house and interact with someone in some way. The same goes for your ideas. One some level, you can’t truly accept them as real until you put it “out there” where it can interact with other people, each their own thoughts and ideas in need of enlivening. This goes back to the idea of giving your project weight by allowing it the importance of being share-worthy, in whatever way you feel most comfortable sharing.

Still, the cat does not stop. He’s in the last stretch and just powering through to the end - not unlike my powering through to the end of this translation yesterday - and winds up face-to-face with the most misunderstood “villain” of any creative’s life; fear.

A third reason to share your progress takes the question of momentum and kicks it up a notch. When you share your progress again and again (consistent sharing of consistent progress of measurable amounts) those with whom you are sharing will grow in confidence and comfort with your project and feel increasingly inclined to talk to you/interact with you in some way regarding your project and its progress. Their interest and interaction adds to your momentum which adds to your output and sharing which adds to their interactivity which all equals one thing, feedback loops.

Feedback loops, in this regard, are great. You’re getting work done, people (even if they are family and friends) are rooting for you to succeed/finish/keep going, and all this helps your brain to commit even harder to your project. You see, it’s kind of hard to doubt yourself when you’re not the only one who believes in what it is you’re doing.

Doubt is the self-critic is the anti-creative manifestation of your lizard brain/fear trying to stop you from getting mauled by a bobcat. Very often we are told to fight this part of ourselves, forgetting that sometimes the most important battles can only be won by logic. You win-over your doubt when you show your fear that continually working on your project isn’t killing you, and you drive that fact home when you open the conversation to “outsiders” who believe enough in what you’re doing to pick up the rallying cry.

Once you’ve built up your trifecta of accountability, momentum, and community, it’s all about getting past that last little bit of fear. Because fear is tricky and can change into lions and elephants.

Fear is the ogre, a part of our story. It’s job - in real life - is to stop us dead in our tracks before we actually wind up dead, and I think we can all admit it does a fantastic job of making every little thing we come up against into a ferocious lion. It’s a king of super-power really.

Because of this super-power we should have respect and gratitude for our fear. When it comes to our creative endeavours, however, we need to learn to address the presence of our fear - let it shakes us unexpectedly, as it is won’t to do - and then remember that creating is not a death sentence. Creating is creation is living.

This transformative power fear has can work in your favor, as the cat knows well and shows by tricking the ogre into becoming a little, tiny mouse.

Once you know what your fear and doubt are trying to do - protect you - you can then curb that need to protect the time and space you set aside for working on your project. Let your fear act as a guardian of whatever little corner or tools you have set aside to complete your goal, let your fear protect you in a way that is constructive. Your fear will not know the difference.

There is of course the risk that your fear can become a little overzealous with this new mission orientiation. A sacred space can be made less “sterile” by having a cup of coffee or light snack at your side, your precious tools need simply a special resting place where they will always go when you are done using them (whether you were using them toward your ultimate goal or for some other purpose.

It is not you who are meant to be consumed by fear, but your fear by you. Shift the focus of your fear and then syphon off some of that energy to invigorate the work you are doing. It takes some practice, persistence really, but the results are pretty fantastic.

It isn’t until all the pieces are in place and the coach rounds the corner to see the beautiful castle (that used to belong to the ogre) that we see the cat has proved himself to and beyond the rule-makers by following his own rules.

We are surrounded by rules. Some necessary, some arbitrarily followed. Many people are so comfortable with the rules that they cannot imagine their lives without them.

When we learn to make our fear work for us, those who live the most strictly by the rules will be the most surprised. It is our work, the work of those who know “something is not right” to forge the new paths; the paths are necessary to us so that we do not lose our minds our souls in this crazy world. It is the forging of these paths which reassures the part of us that follows the rules in order to fit in that we are on to something.

What would a path be, after all, if it did not lead somewhere worth arriving?

The story ends in true “happily ever after” fashion, and yet - with the note that the cat never hunted mice again except when it pleased him to do so - I have to wonder if the allowance was made to suggest that cat would sit put with the standard charms for very long.

The “original" fairy tales do not have sequels or prequels, just versions. When the characters live “happily ever after” we are being told that there are no more stories, no more adventures for them. Happily ever after means never doing anything worthy of mention ever again.

That’s what I’m going against when I say that I want to live happily ever out there. I want an adventure today and today and today, the way life is meant to be lived; with new stories starting whenever an old story is ending, sometimes even in the middle of another story so that various stories or our lives are happening simultaneously.

This is fairy tale living is what Master Cat teaches by example: a miller’s son is a marquis is worthy of the most beautiful princess in the world; a miller’s cat is a gentleman is a trickster is a hero is a lord in his own right; a king is a rule-enforcer and rule-bender; a princess is the thrill of knowing in our bones that we are on the right track to our happily ever out there; field-hands are the proof we have laid out for ourselves that there is something to this thing we are building; and ogre is doubt and fear and our survival instincts in need a little re-direction.

We are each of us the whole story with its characters the different aspects of ourselves. We have only to look to ourselves to see what story we are playing out, and to use that to our advantage. The cat saw and made it work, why not us?

So the Base “Translation” is available to read in its entirety without interruption, and I am off to start Step Two: Research. How exactly I’ll share that progress as I go is as yet undecided - you’ll be the first to know - but some behind-the-scenes stuff doesn’t get posted here. Shocking, I know.

If you never want to miss a thing, I suggest heading over to The Golden Goose Eggs and click the link promising you all the Egg Drops (it’s an email sign-up). If you don’t want to sign up that’s cool, but that email list will get the very first look at the final PDF of the book.

So, it’s worth considering.

Rose Jermusyk · Author · added over 9 years ago

Step One: Translating the Translated, Part 3

Warning: Today’s post is a little long because having a clean apartment is like cleaning my brain is totally related to the bit of “translating” I’m sharing today.

We begin with the cat, who has overheard his master talking about how he plans to eat the cat and then starve to death. Basically, he believes failure is final; but, the cat just knows better. He consoles his master and then asks for his famous wardrobe change.

The key to viewing failure as an option is to bear in mind the difference between that which is possible and that which is probable; choices. A possible outcome is just one of one of any number of outcomes deriving from choices yet to be made. A probable outcomes is an outcome toward which you are already headed due to choices already made.

When we embrace failure as an option we not only view it as a possibility that can be avoided, but we also lift its veil of grand finality by holding in our minds the knowledge that even after we “fail” there are more choices to be made and chances to be had. This brings us to the issue of decision fatigue - or ego depletion - wherein just thinking about the infinite puzzle pieces of possibility can so exhaust us that we are deterred from even trying. This, in turn, shows us that the probable makes for a great aid to the possible.

Every move we make is a decision made is a little more of our creative fire spent. By simplifying certain parts of our daily routine we can free up headspace and mental energy for more important things. Having a life uniform and planning meals for the week are just two examples that can make a difference.

The cat’s master, the miller’s son, isn’t convinced and yet he can’t deny he’s seen the at do some pretty clever things. So the next bit of “translation” helps connect the dots between doubt and hope.

In mathematics, a proof is elegant when it is true and surprisingly simple; some proofs have been so elegant that people couldn’t believe them, thinking the proofs “too good to be true.” There is plenty of research out there to support how certain instances of simplifying make life better, but there are bound to be experiences in your own past - or in the past of someone you know - who may have stumbled into it. Many a former carnivore, for instance, will tell you that giving up meat made going to eat at a restaurant less stressful because those giant menus suddenly had an “underwhelming” - a.k.a. manageable - number of offerings.

Then, the cat gets to work hunting and impressing the king and talking up his master to the point of renaming him the Marquis of Carabas. He does it all because he wants to (he could have very easily run from his master and let the guy starve without getting eaten himself).

Do something every day (or week, just don’t space it out too far or you’ll risk losing momentum) that will bring you toward some goal. You’ll want a specific goal, reasonably sized, with a deadline. Exact steps are nice, but use them as guidelines rather than steadfast rules; the only thing steadfast should be your commitment, your decision to live your life by your terms.

When you then make a measurable amount of progress toward your goal. share your progress. Call someone, start a hashtag, do something that makes your journey solid and real to the world around you. Somewhere out there someone else knows “something is not right” and just needs proof that they’re not the only one.

Having gotten his boot in the castle door, the cat does some more hunting and more impressing and is able to see the reward of the work he is doing.

Again, keep making steady efforts toward your goal. When you’ve made another measurable amount of progress, share it. You affirm your journey’s importance when you give it the weight of your attention and are willing to let others journey with you if they are so inclined.

The original story reveals that the cat does all of his hard work over the course of about three months; not too long, not too short, it’s just the amount of time his project needs. All the while, his work is bringing a spark to those he encounters along the way.

Continue to make progress and continue to share it. What means the world to you just might make someone’s day.

Then, the king and his daughter are on the move and the cat sees his big break, the perfect opportunity to get his master in front of the king without accidentally revealing his peasantry. This next bit of “translation” also does some foreshadowing for the follow-up book I’m planning (gotta keep my momentum going and all).

As you continue toward your ultimate goal your intuition will also go to work trying to help you. If you’ve been going after your goal for a long time you will start to notice opportunitis and resources that can help you along. This is how your intuition helps.

Your intuitions, or guts instincts, are how your subconscious mind communicates with your conscious mind. it will notice opportunities and resources before you are even aware of them. If you have a feeling that a certain action of thing could help you toward your goal, that feeling is worth investigating (assuming you haven’t already gone ahead and dived in without a second thought).

In the story, this is where we see “Marquis of Carabas” in quotes for the last time, when the miller’s son jumps into the river in accordance with the cat’s plan. There’s a bit of a baptismal effect here, but I’ll get to that in a later draft. Right now, we’re all about executing the plan.

Some of the ideas your gut comes up with will be so small you might not think it worth your time to even try. Yet it is more important to follow these smaller ideas. For if they seem too small to do any good, chances are they are also too small to do any harm. And what’s a little risk of a little time spent trying out something a little different?

Especially when you consider how that little thing, on top of all your previous efforts, could result in something pretty great.

The next bit of “translation” is a little unique in that what I wrote is shorter than the original. Haha. That’ll change in later drafts as I talk about the baptismal effect I mentioned before and also work more to talk about the actual story and how it relates to each of us as individuals so that it won’t be stiff in language. If you’re wondering where we are the story, the king’s men have pulled the marquis of the river and he and the princess have fallen in love and the three of them (king, princess, marquis) are all going for a lovely ride while the cat keeps working).

Should your more intuitive moves not pan out, share that news with a hearty, “Ah, well, on to the next thing!” because failure is optional not final. However, should the move prove fruitful, celebrate it! Let whoever you’ve been sharing your progress with - in whatever way you’ve been sharing your progress - know all about the little risk you took and how it paid off and how excited you are to keep moving toward your goal.

And the cat keeps working …

While you take a moment to feel good about not losing heart and or re-affirming your commitment, as the case may be, remember the task at hand; remember the goal you are still moving toward so your subconscious will continue to look for opportunities and resources eve as you are enjoying your downtime (which is not so long as to impair your project’s momentum).

And, now, I’m off to keep working!

P.S. Totally did more to simplify my routine than clean the apartment: pulled out the TimeTimer, pulled out the typewriter, used real peppermint tea instead of water every time I made cocoa.

Rose Jermusyk · Author · added over 9 years ago

Step One: Translating the Translated, Part 2

The next bit of translation from fairytale to academia is the Cat’s first piece of dialogue which - delivered in a nonchalance manner chosen by the Cat - reveals his desire not to die (or experience any other kind of “finality”), his compassion for his master in a time of fear and worry, and the makings of a planning by getting the basics out of the way.

The key to viewing failure as an option is to bear in mind the difference between that which is possible and that which is probable; choices. A possible outcome is just one of one of any number of outcomes deriving from choices yet to be made. A probable outcomes is an outcome toward which you are already headed due to choices already made.

When we embrace failure as an option we not only view it as a possibility that can be avoided, but we also lift its veil of grand finality by holding in our minds the knowledge that even after we “fail” there are more choices to be made and chances to be had. This brings us to the issue of decision fatigue - or ego depletion - wherein just thinking about the infinite puzzle pieces of possibility can so exhaust us that we are deterred from even trying. This, in turn, shows us that the probable makes for a great aid to the possible.

Every move we make is a decision made is a little more of our creative fire spent. By simplifying certain parts of our daily routine we can free up headspace and mental energy for more important things. Having a life uniform and planning meals for the week are just two examples that can make a difference.

The next bit of translation will cover that part of the story where the Miller’s son looks back on his experiential knowledge of the cat to decide whether to give him the boots, the process of looking back to make decisions moving forward. We’ll also start in on the working’s of Master Cat plan to manifest the Marquis de Carabas.

As a side note, I figured out why this translation is taking me longer than anticipated (a single task will fill the entirety of the time you give yourself to perform said task) and am simplifying my own routine in order to move things along (have you heard of TimeTimers, because they’re pretty great).

Also, “translating” the story is step one of this writing process, step two will be filling out the work by cross-referencing my ideas with research, and part three will be to re-introduce the story elements. The first two steps are really all about focusing in on a logical progression of one set of ideas. Any fairy tale you read can be seen to have any number of meanings relevant to our daily living, but by going line-by-line I focus my thoughts just as a good story focuses your attention.