Many people don’t believe their thoughts have any value. When these people have an inkling, an idea, or some other great mental event, they shrug it off and forget about it. Thoughts, for me, are like eggs. Many times, I don’t know where they come from, but suddenly they’re there, and I find myself sitting on them. I figure my job is to make sure those eggs hatch. I’m not responsible for how they got to me, but I am responsible for them once they get here.

Now, many of the ideas I get aren’t that good. If I could show you my hard drive, you’d see how many ideas I’ve hatched that are absolutely terrible. And quite a few more that are mediocre. But, in there are the ideas I absolutely adore, and some I believe to be valuable, though I’m not that attached to them. So, if they don’t die when I hatch them on my hard drive, I follow them through until they’re full grown, and then I have to find a home for them. It’s my job. They’re my eggs.

Some ideas aren’t stories. Some are woodworking ideas, ideas for supper, ways to fix things, conversations I need have with people. Questions.  Lots of ideas are pieces of bigger ideas. So I collect them. Categorize them. File them where they belong. Sit on them.

Happily, Duck Boy found a home (Yeah, Bitingduck!). And now I enter the final phase of helping give birth to an idea and guiding it through to its “adulthood.” Anyhow, the picture I’ve included here today is one from my back yard. It’s an abandoned nest. The eggs arrived, but for some reason the mom has left the nest, never to return. This, for me, is a picture of how some folks treat their ideas, abandoning them before they’re born. So this is my advice: take care of your eggs. If you don’t no one else will.