I was standing here with a stack of stickies, a marker, and bright coloured poster boards strewn across every conceivable surface strategizing the WomanNotWaiting.com vision. I was excited. I was driven. I was compelled to pour inspiration after inspiration onto yellow rectangles when I got distracted by a little quack (see The Ducks Are Quacking).

My loyal fun-loving pooch caught her first waddler and since poodles are so fearsome and menacing, it didn’t take long for her catch to drop the little golden egg she had been incubating.

This particular duck, a duck called Wanda strangely enough, had joined the Gangnam procession from the wrong side of my brain, which happens to be whichever side I don’t agree with at the time. Considering I was in the middle of a creative outburst, Wanda was cramping MY style.  The duckalog went something like this:

“Quack! Qua qua quack qua qua quack qua quaaaaaack?”
(loosely translated as:  Karen! Who the Quack do you thing you aaaaaare?)

To which I replied:

“What the Quack are you doing to my floor?”

Anyway, we had a foul worded war of the minds until thankfully Lola decided it was time to silence Wanda. (Whoops, I should have remembered to feed her I guess….no worries, this is a metaphor. No animals were actually harmed or starved in the writing of this blog).

As Wanda’s feathers settled at my feet, my primal brain was drawn to an oval-shaped shiny object. When I leaned over to pick it up, it shuddered, so I pulled back, startled, waited for it to relax, then nabbed it. The poor thing was terrified.

Lola had killed the messenger.

There I stood, with an orphan in my right hand, harvested from the left side of my brain. It’s fate was doomed.  I was not about to sit on it (click here), so I pulled out my blow dryer and plugged it in. It took a while, but the heat eventually cracked the shell revealing a miniature reproduction of a high school corridor, the cool gang lined up like a gauntlet. I stepped back in horror.

Time stopped with the memory suspended half way between my hand and the floor.

You see, the egg was scented and it stunk. The resurrected emotions of isolation and ridicule spewed their toxic fumes all over my creative space, and I felt nauseous.

I remembered my parents telling me to ignore them.  They weren’t going anywhere in life anyway, but I would. So I buried the labels and my self-worth along with them. And I waited.

I became someone else, someone diminished, non-threatening, eager to please, a noble martyr who put everyone else’s needs ahead of her own. Let me tell you, there is nothing noble about being out of integrity with your life’s purpose. It was time to call upon the graceful warrior.

The egg plummeted to the floor. It was weakened but it was still alive.  Not acceptable! I wasn’t going to wait for that nightmare to come back to haunt me, so I crushed it with my bare foot and screamed…

Who the Quack do you think YOU are!!! (not very graceful like the duckerina in Just Keep On Plucking but it felt pretty good)

That duck is plucked!  YEEHAAA!

Time to pluck YOUR duck. Send us some feathers from your flock.