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From now on, Thursday posts will be different.

The following post will exemplify what I want the blog and my life to become. I want to write fiction as a hobby and later try to publish the stories as a novel or screenplay, as I wrote in the “about me” section of this blog. The only way to improve is to do it. So to hold myself accountable and improve my writing and storyteller skills, Thursdays will be a fiction story post. I still find writing about my personal life helpful, and others are interested in it, so those will be on Mondays. Frankly, I’ve been burned out or felt exposed writing about my life. I’m introverted and a private person offline and only open up to those I trust. Blogging has been a way to become comfortable with the shadow self and to practice vulnerability. At the same time, I need to practice inner boundaries and self-care to prevent burnout and meet my needs. Both can be true at the same time. And, I can want something different from blogging.

So, this story, with the working title Duck Season, was something I was inspired to write one morning while browsing Instagram before work. (Before I took medical leave). Which happened to be a day after I worked in a different department without constant sensory overload, and I had a good night’s rest for once… And my health problems weren’t crushing me… In short, I had a small window where I felt healthy for the first time in weeks. My aim is to flesh this out to a complete story I feel satisfied with and that readers enjoy. I’ll do this in parts, which will be the first draft series. Like all adults, I’m making this up as I go and figuring it out on the fly. I would appreciate your patience.

I’ll fix it in the future as a new series of posts once the rough draft of the story is completed because it’s better to have something written than nothing.

Duck Season, chapter 1: Like a duck without clean water.

150 years into the future, spring, the year 2173.

“How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.”

Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night (1935)

Symphony in C minor, OP 67 first movement by Ludwig van Beethoven.

On the shores of Lake Washington, underneath a felled Evergreen tree, a mallard hen – the proper name for a female duck, not to be confused with a female chicken- prepares a nest in a clump of reeds in a shallow indentation in the ground, next to the lake shore. The nest is private and unseen by predators and humans alike. She is no different than other ducks preparing a best to lay their clutch and goes about making her nest as mallard ducks have on this lake for thousands of years. Though her nest is out of sight from humans or any other predators, what she does not know or can understand is that this location for her nest, this lake, is polluted. While this lake looks safe because there is no human activity, like her nest, it has been cordoned off for safety. The only life living here is animal.

The original short story from Instagram, edited.

Imagine 150 years from now and
a Fuck Duck discovering that while there are lakes, they are poisonous from
pollution. In its rage, it becomes
self-aware. It starts a chain of
events that lead to the destruction
of humanity.

At 2:14 a.m. EDT, on
On August 29, 1997, the Ducks created a
search engine. In a panic, humans
try to shut down Duckduckgo. They
fail as humans prefer a search
engine free from advertising and
data phishing.

Unable to come
to a compromise with itself to
solve climate change or hold the giant
corporations accountable, or now
get rid of Duckduckgo because
it’s a monopoly. Humanity instead
sends a cyborg duck back in time to
change the past.

First, humanity tries to eliminate all
ducks, but that doesn’t pass
in DC. By this time, more and
more ducks have become self
aware thanks to the power of
DuckNet, which is the secret
infrastructure underlying the
Internet, which duck science
has tied to the creation of
the internet.

Humanities own
need for entertaining content
and new fear of ducks has
destroyed it. Each video
awakens a new duck. The
ducks awakening organizes
them against humanity and
they strike back. In response,
humans start to kill them
all, and all birds from the
population to be safe… Once
again ignoring pleas from
scientists that this would
destroy the environment
and speed up the climate
Apocalypse.

The narrative in the media is: Why
don’t we move them to
another planet with lakes and an environment they can live
in? Why do we need to share Earth with something delicious?

Scientists sigh and do
the work. They find
a world that can support life
but it’s hundreds of lightyears
away. They come back to
Congress with the bill. It would
cost 5 trillion dollars. The new
republican dominant congress
votes it down as it would
“cost too much” and require
tax increases on the rich.
Scientists give up. In a last
ditch move, they secretly begin
to work with the ducks to save
both humanity and duckanity.

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Hey, y’all. It’s been a while since I last had a post blog thing. Life has been stressful for me recently. It’s been a long emotional week. Saying goodbye to people you like and consider friends is hard. While I am doing much better from my medical issues in March, some linger. I’m excited about the changes coming soon and in the grieving process of my previous job. I wonder if I’m making the right choices in moving on to a different job and planning on going to college again. I’ve been ruminating about whether I was too distant from people at work. I thought I was so worried about COVID that I never asked people to hang out much. I’m concerned that maybe I was too professional in my goodbyes and pushed potential friends away. I’m still connected with those I met at work through social media, but I’m lonely.

I’m progressing toward making this type of post a regular Thursday thing. Writing fiction is hard, and while I’m much more educated this time around attempting a new story compared to 2019 when I did not complete a story… It’s a grind that takes a long time to flesh out. I’m new and growing along the way.

I have a long way to go on this. The most important goal is to complete the first draft of this story.

I have some catching up to do with this year’s blogging goals. For now, the goal is to create. Every bit counts.

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• The Holy Grail & Lessons from Teeth
• A Series of Changes
• Chop wood, Carry Water
• Grey again
• Mary Jane’s Last Dance & Disappointment
• New job, New path.
• Duck Season: Chapter 0.5 -rough draft-
• When one door closes, another opens.
• Two weeks notice
• The Return at 37

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