Get Those Ducks Wet!

The Universe keeps smacking me around. It happened again Thursday night. Beth and I attended our first Smart Talk event of the 2009 season. Smart Talk is a lecture series targeted especially to women. Celebrity women speak on issues they are passionate about and then take questions afterward. It's a very grown-up way to spend an evening; Beth and I have been going since it started 5 years ago. We've heard Maya Angelou, Mia Farrow, Debbie Reynolds, Jane Fonda, Marianne Pearl among many other equally fascinating women. Thursday night we were slated to hear Joy Behar of The View. Instead because of miserable weather in New York that made it impossible for Ms. Behar to fly to Iowa, we were treated to Jane Pauley. She was highly entertaining and spoke on her passion, "Practical Inspiration," ways for baby boomer women to re-imagine themselves. She was very, very funny, but that shouldn't have been a surprise since she's married to Garry Trudeau of Doonesbury fame. I think you'd have to be funny if you were married to a cartoonist! In the midst of her many stories, however, she told one that really hit home to me. She was discussing her friend, Anne, who is always "trying to get her ducks in a row." What Jane told her was that "it's time to stop trying to get your ducks in a row, and get them in the water instead!"

What great advice! That sounds like me...always thinking, worrying, planning how to get things together. What I need to do is boot those duckies in the bottom and launch them! At the very least they need to get their little duckie feet wet!