Kay’s Odyssey

Category: Diary of Cliches

  • What Rescue Dogs Can Teach Us About Education

    What Rescue Dogs Can Teach Us About Education

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s a thing you wish schools actually taught?
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    What I Wish Schools Actually Taught (And the Little Rescue Pup Who Became My Greatest Teacher)

    “Education isn’t just about preparing children to make a living. It’s about preparing them to live.”

    By the time we graduate, most of us can explain the Pythagorean theorem.

    Some of us can recite Shakespeare.

    A few can even balance chemical equations.

    But remarkably few of us know what to do when our heart breaks.

    We don’t know how to rebuild trust after it’s been shattered.

    We don’t know how to sit with grief without trying to outrun it.

    We don’t know how to love something that refuses to love us back—at least not immediately.

    And perhaps most importantly…

    We don’t know how to earn trust instead of expecting it.

    Ironically, the greatest teacher I’ve ever had never stepped inside a classroom.

    She walked into my life on four paws.

    Her name is Sauli.

    And she changed everything.

    The Day My Real Education Began

    I didn’t buy Sauli.

    I rescued her.

    That distinction matters more than people realize.

    Rescue isn’t shopping.

    It isn’t choosing the cutest puppy from a display window.

    It’s saying yes to uncertainty.

    It’s opening your home to someone carrying a past you may never fully understand.

    When Sauli arrived, she didn’t know she was safe.

    Why would she?

    Safety had never been consistent.

    Love had always come with conditions.

    Humans were simply another variable to calculate.

    So she watched.

    She waited.

    She tested.

    She escaped.

    Repeatedly.

    If you’ve read The Adventures of Sauli the Rescue Pup, you’ll know that escaping is practically her superpower.

    She escaped crates.

    She escaped daycare.

    She escaped bath time.

    She escaped Thanksgiving.

    She escaped common sense.

    Sometimes I think she could escape gravity if given enough motivation.

    At first, I thought my job was to stop her.

    Eventually, I realized my job was to understand her.

    That lesson alone should be part of every school curriculum.

    Lesson One: Behavior Is Communication

    Schools spend years teaching children how to speak.

    Very few teach them how to listen.

    Not just to words.

    To behavior.

    Because behavior tells stories words cannot.

    Sauli wasn’t “being difficult.”

    She wasn’t “disobedient.”

    She wasn’t trying to embarrass me.

    She was communicating.

    “I’m scared.”

    “I don’t understand.”

    “I’ve never had this before.”

    “I don’t know if I can trust you.”

    How many people spend their entire lives doing exactly the same thing?

    The angry coworker.

    The anxious child.

    The friend who never calls back.

    The partner who pushes people away.

    Behavior is rarely random.

    It’s history speaking through action.

    Imagine if schools taught children to ask:

    “What happened to you?”

    Instead of:

    “What’s wrong with you?”

    I think we’d build kinder adults.

    Lesson Two: Trust Cannot Be Demanded

    It Must Be Earned.

    Nobody hands you trust.

    Not children.

    Not people.

    Not rescue dogs.

    You earn it.

    Quietly.

    Patiently.

    Repeatedly.

    Sauli didn’t wake up one morning and decide,

    “Today seems like an excellent day to trust humans.”

    Trust was built one breakfast.

    One walk.

    One gentle touch.

    One promise kept.

    One return home.

    One ordinary day at a time.

    That’s how trust works everywhere.

    In families.

    In friendships.

    In leadership.

    In classrooms.

    Yet we rarely teach that.

    Lesson Three: Failure Is Data

    When Sauli escaped daycare…

    It wasn’t success.

    It also wasn’t failure.

    It was information.

    The environment didn’t work.

    She wasn’t ready.

    Something needed to change.

    Too often schools teach children that mistakes are grades.

    Real life teaches us they’re feedback.

    Every escaped yard.

    Every chewed shoe.

    Every shredded pillow.

    Every impossible afternoon…

    Taught me something.

    Mostly humility.

    But also adaptability.

    Imagine children growing up believing mistakes were experiments instead of verdicts.

    Lesson Four: Curiosity Changes Everything

    Children are naturally curious.

    Adults often educate it out of them.

    Sauli never stopped asking questions.

    What’s behind that door?

    Can I fit under this fence?

    Why is that squirrel so confident?

    Should I investigate this suspicious leaf?

    (Hint: Yes. Always yes.)

    Curiosity kept her alive before she found a home.

    Curiosity is what creates scientists.

    Artists.

    Inventors.

    Writers.

    And occasionally…

    Dogs who accidentally start neighborhood revolutions.

    Lesson Five: Home Is a Feeling

    Not a Place.

    The first time Sauli truly relaxed…

    It wasn’t because the house changed.

    It was because she believed she belonged.

    That moment is impossible to describe unless you’ve witnessed it.

    A rescue dog sleeping deeply for the first time.

    The sigh.

    The soft breathing.

    The complete surrender.

    That’s home.

    Schools teach geography.

    History.

    Economics.

    Important things.

    But they rarely teach belonging.

    How to create it.

    How to recognize it.

    How to offer it.

    Those lessons shape lives far longer than memorized dates.

    That’s Why I Started Writing About Her

    People often ask why I turned Sauli’s adventures into a children’s book series.

    The funny answer?

    Because nobody would believe these stories otherwise.

    The real answer?

    Because underneath every hilarious escape, every chaotic bathhouse disaster, every daycare rebellion, every impossible adventure…

    …there’s a lesson.

    Not the kind that lectures.

    The kind that sneaks into your heart while you’re laughing.

    That’s what I wanted The Adventures of Sauli the Rescue Pup to become.

    Not simply children’s books.

    Conversation starters.

    Stories families could read together.

    Stories that remind children—and adults—that being different isn’t something to fix.

    It’s often something to celebrate.

    If Schools Taught Just One More Subject…

    I’d call it Empathy 101.

    The final exam wouldn’t be multiple choice.

    It would be simple.

    Could you make someone feel safe?

    Could you earn trust?

    Could you choose patience over judgment?

    Could you see beyond behavior?

    Could you love without trying to change someone first?

    Because those are the lessons that build better families.

    Better communities.

    Better leaders.

    Better humans.

    Ironically…

    I learned every one of them from a black Belgian Malinois who still believes rules are merely interesting suggestions.

    Final Thought

    People sometimes tell me that I rescued Sauli.

    I smile every time.

    Because the truth is…

    She rescued an education I didn’t even know I was missing.

    And every new book in The Adventures of Sauli the Rescue Pup is simply another chapter in the curriculum she continues to teach.

    No classroom required.

    Just an open heart.

    And maybe a leash.

    Although, knowing Sauli…

    She’d probably escape that too. 🐾

  • Why You Should Own Your Audience Beyond Social Media

    Why You Should Own Your Audience Beyond Social Media

    I Don’t Own My Audience on Any Platform Except One

    Every platform I post on will, at some point, without asking me, change the rules of how many of my own followers actually see what I make. This is not a conspiracy theory. It’s just how the business works — attention is the product, and I am, at best, a supplier who doesn’t get a vote. I’ve made peace with this the way you make peace with weather. I just stopped pretending any of those platforms were mine.

    I do own one thing, though, and I didn’t fully appreciate it until I watched a video quietly reach a fraction of the people who’d deliberately chosen to follow me for it.

    The moment this actually became real to me

    I posted something I was genuinely proud of, to an audience I’d spent 18 months building, and watched it get shown to a noticeably smaller slice of that audience than the post before it, for reasons nobody explained to me, because nobody owes me an explanation — I’m a guest there, however long I’ve been visiting. Nothing had changed about the content. Something had changed about the rules, quietly, upstream, somewhere I don’t have access to.

    That’s the moment I stopped thinking of platforms as places I “have an audience” and started thinking of them as places I’m allowed to rent attention, on terms that can change without notice, forever, as a permanent condition of doing business there.

    The one exception

    My email list — which for me lives inside Substack — doesn’t work that way. If someone subscribed, they see what I send. Not “might see, depending on an algorithm’s mood that week.” See. That’s the entire deal, and it’s a deal so simple it almost sounds naive to say out loud in an industry this obsessed with growth hacks and engagement rates.

    I don’t say this to be precious about email newsletters, which I understand is a slightly unfashionable thing to be precious about. I say it because it’s the one piece of this whole system I actually own outright, and everything else — the clips, the reposts, the cross-posts — I’ve started thinking of as advertising for the one channel where the rules can’t quietly change under me.

    Why this changes how I think about the whole workflow

    Every platform still matters. I’m not walking away from any of them — that would be its own kind of self-sabotage, given how much of this system depends on reaching people who’ve never heard of me yet. But I’ve stopped treating them as equally mine. The clips and social posts are outreach. The home-base post, the one going to people who already opted in, is the actual relationship. Everything else is just how I introduce myself to strangers who might eventually want to be there too.

    I used to measure success by whatever the biggest number was that week — most views, most likes, whichever platform had a good day. I measure it differently now. How many people are on the list I actually own. Everything else is weather, and I’ve stopped checking the forecast quite so anxiously.

    What I’d tell someone building this for the first time

    Build the audience you rent. You have to — that’s where discovery happens, that’s where strangers become readers. But build the one you own at the same time, from day one, even when it feels smaller and slower and less exciting than watching a clip take off. The clip’s numbers will humble you eventually, on a schedule you don’t control. The list won’t, because nobody but you decides what happens to it.

    The Content Multiplication System

    Turn one piece of content into a steady stream of reach. Grab the toolkit here to streamline your workflow.

    A promotional graphic for The Content Multiplication System showing a dark cover with title text and small graphic symbols representing multi-platform content distribution.
    Product cover for The Content Multiplication System toolkit.
  • Transform Your Everyday Skills into Profit

    Transform Your Everyday Skills into Profit

    The Most Undervalued Skill: Turning Your “Invisible Expertise” Into an Income Stream

    I wrote my book, How to Start a Small Business That Actually Makes Money, in the messy, disorienting wake of a total career collapse. One Monday, I was a senior engineer with a ten-year plan; by Friday, a corporate layoff had erased years of careful architecture. In the vacuum that followed, I tried to pivot based on pure passion—launching an artisanal candle business that left me inhaling fragrance oils while my savings bled dry.

    I eventually realized that I didn’t need more “hustle.” I needed to master a skill that is technically basic, yet one that most people completely ignore: The ability to audit your own life for “invisible expertise” and solve an obvious problem for a specific price.

    The Curse of Familiarity

    The most reliable source of a business idea is the expertise you’ve already built over years of trial and error. The problem is that expertise is invisible from the inside. Because you have lived with these skills for so long, they feel “normal” to you. You assume that if a task is easy for you, it must be “cheap” or of low value to the market.

    This is a fundamental error in judgment. Most people spend their lives chasing a “lightning strike” of original genius, while they completely overlook the “leaks in the plumbing” they are uniquely qualified to fix. In reality, originality is not required; execution is.

    The Skills You Are Taking for Granted

    When I ask people what they are good at, they usually give me a resume title. But the money is in the granular tasks. To stop undervaluing yourself, you have to look at three specific areas:

    • Professional Skills: A project manager’s real value isn’t “management”; it’s vendor negotiation and risk identification. A teacher’s real skill is explaining complex topics simply and managing resistant people.
    • Informal Skills: These are the things friends and neighbors already “consume” your time for—like reorganizing a kitchen or fixing a recurring tech problem. If you are already doing it for free, you have a validated skill that people want.
    • The Insider’s Advantage: Applying an ordinary skill to a specific industry you understand deeply makes it extraordinary. A bookkeeper who specializes in restaurant tip pools and POS systems can charge a 30% premium because they speak the industry’s language.

    The “Boring” Truth About Success

    Most aspiring entrepreneurs “play business” by spending months on logos, websites, and business cards. This is productive procrastination—a way to feel busy while delaying the uncomfortable moment of actually asking for money.

    The “basic” skill most people lack is the discipline to build a Minimum Viable Business: an offer, a price, and a way to reach someone who needs help. I’ve learned that the “cool” startups often just pay for therapy, while the “boring” businesses—the ones that solve recurring, unglamorous problems—are the ones that actually pay the mortgage.

    Stop Dreaming and Start Engineering

    My goal isn’t for you to just read a book; it’s for you to have a real business by the time you finish it. If you can’t make $500 from an idea in thirty days using only your current resources, you don’t have a business—you have a concept.

    If you are currently standing in your own “messy middle,” stop looking for inspiration and start looking for the expertise you already own. To get the clinical, data-driven blueprint I used to rebuild my own life—including the exact worksheets for the Skills Inventory and the Five-Conversation Validation Method—grab your copy of How to Start a Small Business That Actually Makes Money.

    Let’s get to work on building a foundation that provides structural stability in an era of uncertainty.

  • Break Free from Clichés: Rewrite Your Life Story

    Break Free from Clichés: Rewrite Your Life Story

    You believe you are choosing freely, but most of the time, you are simply repeating fluently,,. We all carry “invisible scripts”—those socially approved clichés like “everything happens for a reason” or “it is what it is”—that act as beautiful excuses for staying exactly where we are,,. For the high-achiever, this is the ultimate “self-trick”: you have become so efficient at reframing your discomfort into “wisdom” that you have lost the ability to hear the actual data your life is trying to send you,,,.

    These clichés are incomplete truths; they offer a false sense of “narrative coherence” while keeping you quietly constrained,,,. They allow you to narrate your hurt with such composure that the world calls it strength, but your nervous system knows it is just passive endurance,,,. You aren’t being “resilient”—you are just suppressing elegantly,,.

    True growth begins when you pause before the borrowed sentence completes itself,,. It starts when you stop using language to “soften chaos” and start using it to define your boundaries,,. Self-authorship is the act of finishing the sentence yourself—moving from a life that is merely “functional” to one that is finally alive,,,.

    Stop living a borrowed sentence. It’s time to rewrite the ones that trap you.

    Watch the latest episode of the Diary of Cliches Podcast here!

  • Understanding Emotional Bypassing: Why It Harms You

    Understanding Emotional Bypassing: Why It Harms You

    You’re Turning Off the Check Engine Light

    High-functioning people are masters of the “Great Self-Trick”: the ability to narrate their own hurt with such composure that the world mistakes it for strength. But let’s be honest—you aren’t being resilient; you’re just turning off the diagnostic bulb.

    Every time you reach for a cliché like “Just stay positive” or “Everything happens for a reason” to neutralize a difficult moment, you are practicing emotional bypassing. You are silencing the vital data your engine needs to survive. Emotions are data, not obstacles. Anger signals an injustice; frustration signals a misalignment; sadness tells you that something actually mattered.

    When you reframe your pain before you’ve even felt it, you aren’t evolving—you are suppressing elegantly. You are building a life that looks coherent on paper but feels “quietly constrained” in reality. Stop calling your endurance “wisdom” and stop calling your silence “maturity”. Your internal alarm system is screaming for a reason. Are you going to keep driving until the engine fails, or are you finally ready to pause and listen to the truth?

    Watch the full episode of the Diary of Cliches Podcast here!

  • The Danger of Living on Autopilot: Break Free

    The Danger of Living on Autopilot: Break Free

    You think you’re in the driver’s seat of your own life, but the truth is more unsettling: you are likely just a very talented narrator for a script you didn’t write.

    Most high-achievers pride themselves on their autonomy, yet they spend their days “repeating fluently” inherited cultural reflexes while calling it wisdom. We reach for “socially approved sentences” like “it is what it is” or “everything happens for a reason” because our brains prefer narrative coherence—a story that makes sense—over the raw, chaotic data of the truth. These clichés are the ultimate “self-trick”: they allow you to narrate your hurt with such composure that the world calls it strength, when it is actually just endurance disguised as maturity.

    But at what point does your realism become self-abandonment?

    True self-authorship begins with a deliberate interruption. It’s the power to pause before the inherited sentence completes itself and ask two diagnostic questions:

    1. “Where did this sentence originate?”
    2. “Does it still apply?”

    If your life feels “coherent—and still constrained,” you aren’t living; you’re just performing a role in a story that someone else authored. Reclaiming your life doesn’t require a loud rebellion; it requires the quiet courage to stop being a passive narrator and start being an active agent who defines their own meaning.

    Which sentence has been quietly running your life—and what would change if you finally stopped repeating it?

    Watch the full episode of the Diary of Cliches Podcast here!

  • Stop Waiting: Claim Your Agency Now

    Stop Waiting: Claim Your Agency Now

    In the world of high-achievers, we are taught that patience is a moral virtue and that composure is rewarded. We tell ourselves that “good things come to those who wait,” internalizing a “quiet meritocracy” where we expect our excellence to eventually be “interpreted correctly” by an authority or a system.

    But here is the provocative truth: Resentment is the receipt for the time you spent waiting for someone else to validate your worth.

    When you outsource your agency to the clock, you aren’t practicing “emotional intelligence”—you are practicing passive resignation. While you stay quiet to keep the peace and play the role of the “strong one,” you are privately paying for that “forced pleasantness” with a slow erosion of your self.

    The cost of this script is a life that feels “coherent—and still constrained,” where you are “repeating fluently” the habit of endurance instead of choosing freely to assert your value. True evolution begins when you realize that “good” things come faster and more accurately to those who define what “good” looks like before they ever begin waiting.

    Stop waiting for the universe to reward your silence. Authorship begins when you stop calling your resentment “patience” and start calling it data

    Watch the latest episode of the Diary of Cliches Podcast

  • Facing Identity Crisis: A Tale of Job Loss and Belonging

    Facing Identity Crisis: A Tale of Job Loss and Belonging

    What happens when the “Monkey Mafia” hijacks your dessert table—and your entire 20-year life plan hits a Mumbai-sized pothole?

    In this raw, satirical, and deeply provocative narrative, Kay Jay dives into the unfiltered truth of hitting a crater so deep it swallows your entire identity. From the high-stakes tech world of San Francisco to a rain-drenched Mumbai wedding invaded by cake-thieving primates, she explores the messy middle of reinvention after a sudden layoff reduces a two-decade career to a terrifying 60-day visa countdown.

    Through generational clashes over “digital nonsense” and the soulful anchor of a rescue dog named Sauli, Kay Jay shares the hard-won wisdom that life’s detours are often the real story. This is more than a memoir; it is an invitation to the slow, patient work of belonging to yourself—a state found only after external labels like job titles and visas are stripped away.

    If your corporate “badge of honor” was revoked tomorrow, who is the person left standing in the rubble?

    Watch the latest episode of the Diary of Cliches Podcast!

  • Who Are You Without Your Career?

    Who Are You Without Your Career?

    For two decades, your identity was a fortress built on corporate efficiency, a high-stakes software career, and the heavy “badge of honor” of a government-issued visa stamp. Then, a single corporate email unplugs the console, reducing twenty years of building to a terrifying 60-day countdown.

    In Who Would You Be Without Labels?, Kay Jay strips away the “shimmering mirage of belonging” to expose the raw, unfiltered truth of a total identity collapse. From the “digital abyss” of professional rejection to the “reverse culture shock” of returning to a home that no longer feels like yours, she navigates the messy middle of reinvention with sharp, satirical wit. This narrative challenges the societal scripts we are handed—the ones where success is measured by job titles and “real” work is only what can be touched, like bridges or dams.

    Through the lens of life’s deepest “potholes,” Kay Jay shares the hard-won wisdom that these detours are not failures of intelligence, but profound invitations to find a new definition of success. It is an exploration of “presence without performance” and the slow, patient work of finally belonging to yourself.

    If everything you use to define yourself was stripped away tomorrow, who is the person left standing in the rubble?

    Watch the full episode of the Diary of Cliches Podcast!

  • Navigating Love’s Messy Realities

    Navigating Love’s Messy Realities

    Romance is Watching You Fall Apart

    I’ve always believed that true romance isn’t found in a “neat little package” tied with a perfect bow. To me, romance is something much grittier and more profound; it is the quiet, often terrifying courage of watching someone you love fall apart and choosing to stay anyway.

    Beyond the Michelin-Starred Facade

    When I wrote The Chef, I wanted to explore what happens when the “Michelin-starred” success of a man like Kevin collides with the “lead apron” of depression. In the world of romance, we often want the hero to be untouchable, but Kevin is haunted by a “gnawing emptiness” that makes even answering a text feel like a “Herculean effort”.

    Real intimacy in that story isn’t just about the “alchemy of flame, butter, garlic, and wine” they share in the kitchen. It’s the moment Tammy looks past his professional prestige to see the man whose “inner world was crumbling”. I believe that intimacy is not about a “flawless performance”; it is the raw honesty of showing up “hungry, imperfect, and willing to be fed”.

    The Honesty of the “Nuts” and the Messy

    Book cover of Beautiful Men with bold, visually striking cover artwork.
    Book cover for Beautiful Men: The Dog Walker.

    I know that my approach to storytelling can be polarizing. When The Dog Walker was released, a reviewer called my protagonist, Sarah, “absolutely nuts” for her humiliating, grief-stricken attempts to connect with Andy. I actually smiled when I read that. Why? Because I didn’t set out to write a flattering story; I set out to write about longing that is “raw, unfiltered and humiliating”.

    If Sarah’s journey made you uncomfortable, it’s because “discomfort is the art” and “awkwardness is the honesty” of the human condition. Romance is being messy. It is the “cringeworthy moments” we usually try to hide, laid bare before another person who doesn’t turn away.

    Navigating the Digital Abyss

    In Fever Dreams, I took this theme into the “digital labyrinth”. Dev and Mira are two souls who find a “fragile sanctuary” through a screen, yet they are paralyzed by the fear that a physical meeting will shatter their “shimmering mirage of belonging”.

    They are “spectators in their own lives,” wondering if their connection is a genuine bond or just a “projection of their own desires”. Romance, in their world, is the agonizing wait for a “tomorrow” that perpetually recedes. It is the willingness to confront the “void” together, even when reality feels “slippery” and unaligned with your desires.

    Choosing the Shared Imperfection

    Ultimately, I write for the “thinkers, feelers, and the ones who never stopped wondering”. We live in an age of curated profiles and “manufactured smiles,” but my stories insist that we are more than our masks.

    True connection is born out of “shared imperfection”. It is the realization that while we are all navigating our own “urban mazes” of loneliness, there is a “pathway to connection” found in the very things that make us fall apart. Thank you for having the courage to walk with me through these shadows.

    Watch the latest episode of the Beautiful Men Podcast