The calm, cool ocean of books beneath the desert surface rippled, disrupted by the movements of two tiny fish fleeing a school of sharks. The footsteps of the guards echoing nearby, we careened into a dusty corner of the underground bookstacks.

In a haphazard pile, a complete set of Foggworth’s Encyclopedic Volumes, Ninth Edition sat uselessly. But as I began to spin around, looking hopelessly for a way out, Romulus began moving the books aside. Beneath it, as Romulus had somehow known, was a round weathered manhole cover made of wood, with a rope pull attached to the top. We went feet first down into the ground and quickly replaced the cover, hoping the pile of books we’d stacked up outside before descending would be enough to throw the guards off our trail. I lit a match and held it up: there was a spartan bunker inside, with cans of food, two chairs, two books, and a single chalkboard.

The faint traces of thousands of words, erased and overwritten, then erased and overwritten again lingered on the chalkboard. But there was just one phrase that was written boldly, in a modest size, at the center of the board:

“Teach to learn yields strength to earn.”

We waited until the guards’ footsteps had passed. When things felt safe, we pushed up on the manhole cover. But it wouldn’t budge, no matter how much we tried.

“There’s nothing on top of here,” I said, annoyed. “What’s going on?”
The proverb written on the board stared back at us mockingly.
My rage at being unable to leave having hit an interminable point, I walked over and inspected the cans of food in the corner. They looked old and their contents, like “Canned Pig Hoof in Gelatin”, or the ominously named “Canned Horse Face”, were all unappetizing.

I paced for a while as Romulus sat down with the books. One was an old copy of a book called Habitus Atomae that Romulus and I had both read here in Tuaqie. The second book had an indecipherable title in some unknown hieroglyphic language.

“Let’s blackboard a strategy,” Romulus said. “I’ve developed this habit of writing every day, and I’ve noticed a power gathers around my fingertips when I write down observations and truths that appear in my life.”
He took a piece of chalk and got up at the board.

We took turns writing down the gist of Habitus Atomae, and I watched as a green aura appeared around our fingertips. An aura in the complementary color had appeared around the wooden door in the roof of the bunker.

The second book, previously indecipherable, had begun to translate itself. It was called “The Traveller’s Manifesto”.

____________________________________________________________________________

Editor’s note (source: http://simplebits.com/2019/06/25/dribbble.html)

17. Write, teach, and share what you’re learning

I owe my entire career to writing and sharing. It started with blogs. Blogs were the way we communicated ideas back in those early web days. I loved blogs because they were so empowering. I dropped out of college, had no formal training in much of anything, yet I could share my thoughts on a blog and reach most of the world. Magical.

And so I starting writing. I wrote about what I was learning as I was learning it. It forced me to think about what I was learning in a different way, how to explain it to someone as green as I was. It turns out this is not only helpful for retaining knowledge about a subject, but it’s also a nice way for other folks to learn. It’s the way I learned from other people figuring it out as they went as well.

Something to keep in mind is that you don’t need to be an expert to start teaching. Everyone is figuring things out as they go. This became a recurring theme in the fifty-odd interviews I did on the Overtime podcast. So many talented folks attribute teaching while they were learning to helping their career. Start writing and sharing no matter what stage your career is at.