Iterate through failure

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Progress through practice is incremental. Learning, training, and maintaining proficiency is an iterative process heavily weighted in the early stages with many failures. The only way to get more skilled at something is to go through these failures and not be discouraged by them. Failure is not an obstruction to the development of skill. It is the guardian of success. Failing indicates you are on the map, in the terrain that leads to proficiency. In the beginning, how would you know if you were progressing if you didn't fail and fail again? Befriend failure. Embrace failure. Her hand is the hand that guides learning.

My dog, the mushroom farmer

Non-fiction flash writing practice.

"Zivon, Zivon, come here!"

Is it the corpse of a mouse, is it a fermented Italian Plum leftover from the fall harvest, is it deer shit or worse yet, coyote shit?

"Drop it! Drop it!"

He's hesitant. Not yet sure he wants to comply.

"Drop it!"

This is a command he is still trying to decide if he will follow or not. Mostly so far he mostly resists following if, but we're working on it.

No, it turns out Zivon spits out a clump of pine duff mixed with two perfectly fine-looking white mushrooms. He has been cultivating his mushroom crop again.

What the hell! There are five inches of snow on the ground, and he has his nose buried in it, apparently zeroed in on his private mushroom patch.

These fat white mushrooms are all over the place, in our lawn, next to the kennel, in our wood lot, and Zivon's favorite patch on the hillside next to the garage. On walks with Zivon in the wood lot, we've seen where the grasses and pine duff has been pawed away, exposing the stump of the remains of these mushrooms. The deer, rabbits, and coyotes just love them, and so does Zivon.

He's a proud amateur mycologist.

References

Ira Glass on the secret of success in creative work

This post is meant to help us renew our commitment to caring for the world and remind our future selves to be fractionally better than before. This post points to where I want to work on my mental fitness and ‘adulting.’. It is a reminder to operate in the world with love and compassion and includes tips put together in moments of clarity to help when caught up in the world’s uncontrollable chaos. Please, continue the conversation anytime: will@kestrelcreek.com.