I plan; I design; I create.

The quote comes from a review in BrainPickings of Janna Malamud Smith, An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make Their Way to Mastery.

As with the literal act of gardening, pursuing any practice seriously is a generative, hardy way to live in the world. You are in charge (as much as we can ever pretend to be — sometimes like a sea captain hugging the rail in a hurricane); you plan; you design; you labor; you struggle. And your reward is that in some seasons you create a gratifying bounty.

I plan; I design; I create.

(cheezburger; I'm pretty sure the cat in the picture
is the international cat celebrity Nyalan)

With my skills I express myself.

Today's cat is inspired by Maria Popova's review in Brain Pickings of Janna Malamud Smith, An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make Their Way to Mastery.

Whether by design or by accident, many of us seem to find enduring gratification in struggling to master and then repeatedly applying some difficult skill that allows us at once to realize and express ourselves.

With my skills I express myself.

(image from cheezburger)

Delight in meandering!

Delight in meandering!

(cheezburger)

Today's cat is inspired by this wonderful review in Maria Popova's Brain Pickings of Janna Malamud Smith, An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make Their Way to Mastery. Here is the quote in context:

The work grows as our minds (conscious and unconscious) and our bodies would have it grow. Technique may require discipline and set the order of things, apprenticeships may demand periods of subordination, but the imaginative acts that propel the effort are themselves serendipitous. In your garden you may set out to clip the roses, but you notice a weed you want to pull from among the coreopsis, except that first there is a rogue branch to be snipped from the holly shrub—and on and on until dark finally settles, ending your day. An occasional task has to be done just now and just so. But mostly, you delight in meandering, allowing the work to command your attention variously — with its method inscribed by the way you encounter your plants.

And if you are curious about that wonderful word "meander," check out Wikipedia: Meander (Rivers).

(meandering river in England)

English. I rule an imagined world of my own.

This long quote is very much worth reading; it is from a review in BrainPickings of a book by Janna Malamud Smith: An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make Their Way to Mastery.

The quote is about gardens and the metaphorical "garden" that is the space for growth and creativity in our own lives:

The good life is lived best by those with gardens — a truth that was already a gnarled old vine in ancient Rome, but a sturdy one that still bears fruit. I don’t mean one must garden qua garden… I mean rather the moral equivalent of a garden — the virtual garden. I posit that life is better when you possess a sustaining practice that holds your desire, demands your attention, and requires effort; a plot of ground that gratifies the wish to labor and create — and, by so doing, to rule over an imagined world of your own.

That last line is what inspired today's growth cat:

I rule an imagined world of my own.

(cheezburger)