The Duck &
the Well.
a story, a metaphor, and four steps to a better life
written by Alec Mekarzel
Part I · The Story
Once upon a time, there was a well at the edge of a quiet clearing. It was old — built from mossy stone, with a wooden bucket on a rope that creaked when the wind blew. No one remembered who built it or when. It had simply always been there, half-hidden by the grass that grew tall in spring and went gold in autumn.
If you leaned over the rim and looked down, you could see the water — or whatever water there was. Some days the surface was high and caught the light, giving back a clean reflection. Some days it was low and murky, hard to read. And on the worst days, there was nothing at all. Just stone and shadow, all the way down.
The well didn't explain itself. It filled when it was tended, and emptied when it wasn't. Rain helped when it came. But mostly it was the people who came — the ones who brought a bucket, day after day, and poured a little more in than they took out. The well remembered those people.
In the water of this well lived a duck. Small. Yellow. Made of rubber — or something close to it. No one could remember how it got there. Most people who walked past took it for a child's bath toy somebody had dropped in, and kept going. But a handful knew better. They told different stories about where the duck came from, but they all agreed on this: it was magical, it was patient, and it carried every answer you'd ever need.
Those answers weren't the duck's. They were yours — the ones you already knew but hadn't heard yourself say, the ones buried under everything that landed on top of a week. The duck just held them, waiting at the bottom of the well for the water to lift it close enough to be heard.
When the well was full, the duck floated near the light, and a whisper could reach it. When the well was low, the duck sat far below, and even a shout couldn't reach it.
The ones who knew the trick came most mornings with a bucket. They poured what they had into the well — the week they'd had, the thing a partner had said, the decision they'd been putting off. Some days the water barely moved. Some days it rose high enough that when they spoke, their voice carried all the way down, and the duck rode it back up carrying an answer they'd been holding for weeks, or years, without knowing they held it. They'd stand up from the rim lighter than they'd arrived, and go do the thing.
The ones who kept coming never ran dry. The ones who got strong, got busy, got needed elsewhere — who stopped bringing the bucket — found out what a low well felt like. The water dropped. The duck sank back toward the bottom with every answer they'd ever earned still strapped to its back. Not lost. Just out of reach, waiting on water that wasn't coming.
The well was never magic on its own. It was magic for the people who kept filling it.
The duck never spoke. The water did the lifting. The ones who kept filling the well never ran dry.
Part II · The Metaphor
Software engineers have a practice called rubber duck debugging. When you're stuck on a problem, you explain it out loud — to a rubber duck on your desk, to a houseplant, to nobody at all. And by the time you've articulated the problem clearly enough for the duck to "understand," the answer appears. The duck never speaks. It doesn't need to. The act of externalizing the thought is what does the work.
In The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron introduces something remarkably similar from the other end of the human experience. Her morning pages — three pages of longhand free-writing, every morning, before anything else — are the same fundamental act. You externalize what's in your head before it calcifies into anxiety or evaporates into nothing. No audience. No editing. No agenda. Just the quiet work of tending to yourself.
Cameron also talks about the well. The well is your inner reservoir — the place your creativity, your clarity, and your sense of self draw from. Life depletes it. Busyness, noise, obligations, the thousand small demands that never feel important enough to say no to but slowly drain you anyway. If you don't tend to the well, it runs dry. And when it's dry, everything suffers — your thinking, your relationships, your sense of direction.
Morning pages are not about being a writer. They are about getting to the other side of what's in the way.
The duck and the well. Two metaphors from two completely different worlds — software engineering and creative writing — that arrive at the same truth: you already have most of the answers you need. You just haven't sat still long enough to hear them. Put them together, and the shape of the practice becomes clear. The duck is your inner knowing. The water is what lifts it within reach. Journaling is the bucket you bring — and the well runs on what you pour into it.
I found Cameron's work during one of those dry periods. If you've read the story of how Where Was I came to be, you'll know I'd been through a hard stretch — lost my best friend, quarantined in the pandemic, watched my house burn down mid-pandemic, and ended a relationship. I finally took the chance on therapy and psychiatry. Both saved me. But I noticed that the sessions worked best when I'd already done some of the thinking. When I'd sat with things long enough to know what I actually needed to talk about.
That's when I started journaling seriously. And over time, the practice grew into something more than just writing. It became a cycle — four steps that feed into each other, each one a way of tending to the well. Cameron gave me the foundation. Therapy and my support system gave me the structure. Where Was I is the tool I built to hold it all together.
These are the four steps.
Part III · The Four Steps
Journal
Carry a bucket to the well. Every morning. Before the day gets its hands on you.
The first step is Cameron's morning pages, adapted for a screen. Sit down and write — not for an audience, not for posterity, not to be good at it. Just to get what's in your head down into the well before it calcifies into anxiety or evaporates into nothing. Where Was I sets a 750-word daily target, drawn directly from Cameron's three pages. It's enough that you can't skate by on a sentence, but not so much that it becomes a chore.
Every entry is a bucket. Some days you won't feel anything shift — the duck stays low, the water barely moves, and the page feels like noise. That's fine. That's the point. You're not writing to be answered today. You're building the level it takes to be answered at all. Somewhere, on a day you weren't expecting it, the water is suddenly high enough that something rises with it — a thing you didn't know you were carrying, a connection you hadn't made, an answer to a question you forgot you were asking.
The act of writing is the act of thinking — not a record of thinking you already did.
Your journal is a very patient rubber duck. It doesn't interrupt you, doesn't check its phone, doesn't glance at the clock. It holds everything, judges nothing, and gives you back exactly what you put in — which turns out to be more than you expected. Every entry is both the bucket and the conversation at once. You pour, you talk, and some of what you pour is the talking. The well rises because you kept showing up.
Reflect
Look down. See what the water has lifted.
Cameron tells her students to resist the urge to reread their morning pages right away — to let them accumulate first, and then look back. The magic isn't in any single entry. It's in the patterns that rise across many of them. You keep writing about the same tension at work. You keep mentioning the same friend. Your energy crests and dips with the same rhythms. These aren't coincidences. They're what the duck has been carrying this whole time, finally visible because the water has come up high enough to see them.
Reflection asks you to look across your entries and notice: what is my writing telling me? Where are the consistencies — the things that keep showing up because they genuinely matter? Where are the inconsistencies — the gaps between what you say you value and how you actually spend your time?
Where Was I's analysis tools help surface these patterns, but the real work is yours. A tool can flag that you've mentioned "feeling stuck" in eight of your last twelve entries. Only you can lean over the rim, look at what the water has lifted, and decide what it means.
You already know most of what you need to know. You just haven't sat still long enough to hear it.
This is where journaling stops being a vent and starts becoming a practice. You're no longer just clearing the silt — you're reading what the water reveals. Reading yourself, like a book you're writing one day at a time. The recurring themes are the chapters that matter most.
Practice
Carry a bucket back with you.
Reflection surfaces what the water has lifted. Practice is where you stand up lighter than you sat down, shoulders back, and take the answer with you.
Cameron pairs morning pages with what she calls the solo date, a weekly solo expedition to tend to the well. Same principle, different direction: an answer is only yours once you act on it. You have to get out of your head and into the world.
This is the step most people skip. They gain the insight, feel the flash of clarity, and then — life. The meeting starts, the kids need something, the phone buzzes. The insight evaporates before it gets anywhere near the rest of the week. Two months later they're writing about the same thing, wondering why nothing changed.
Practice is where you convert understanding into intention, and intention into action. You noticed you keep writing about feeling disconnected from your partner — so you commit to one undistracted evening a week. You noticed resentment creeping in at work — so you draft the conversation you've been avoiding. You noticed your energy craters every Sunday night — so you redesign how you spend your weekends.
Practices you're building. Intentions you've set. Patterns you're actively working against. All in one place — so when you open your journal tomorrow, you're not starting from scratch. You're picking up where you left off.
The difference between journaling and a journaling practice is this step. Journaling is cathartic. A journaling practice is transformative. One lets you feel better in the moment. The other changes the trajectory.
Insight without practice is just
a nice thought you had once.
Share
Let it rain.
By the time you've journaled, reflected, and practiced, you know what's actually going on. You've moved past the silt. You have patterns you've noticed, key moments that mattered, questions you're genuinely sitting with. Now comes the hardest part: saying it out loud to someone who matters.
Sharing is the rain. You carry the buckets; you don't get to summon the rain. But the act of being vulnerable — in therapy, with a friend, with a partner — is what calls the weather in. Sometimes that rain comes with tears. That's not a breakdown. That's the weather changing. And rain doesn't just fill your well. It waters the grass that grew back around the clearing, and the roots of the trees nearby. Your growth gives life to the people around you too.
Therapy and psychiatry saved me. They're part of the system — and they work even better when you've already started the conversation with yourself.
Sometimes a therapy session is just venting — and that's fine. That's what it's there for. But when you've already done some of the thinking, the session can start at a higher altitude. You walk in knowing the thread: "Here's the pattern I noticed. Here's what I've tried. Here's where I'm stuck." The conversation goes deeper. And that depth — the honesty, the release — is what brings the rain.
The same goes for the people in your life. When you've been tending to yourself, what you share comes from a clearer place. You're not dumping murky water. You're being honest from a place of care — for yourself and for them. And the rain that falls in those conversations waters more than just your well. It nourishes the whole clearing.
And then the rain comes.
Every honest conversation is rain. Every moment of vulnerability — in therapy, with a friend, with someone you trust enough to be unfinished in front of — sends water back into the well. Not just yours. Theirs too. The rain doesn't fall in a single spot. It feeds the whole clearing. The grass grows back. The wildflowers return. The trees nearby put out new roots.
But rain alone can't sustain a well you've abandoned. You still have to come back, bucket in hand, and pour. And so you return — not from scratch, but from somewhere further along. You open the journal, and you write. The cycle continues.
Journal. Reflect. Practice. Share. Each step is an act of tending. Each loop brings you closer to the person you're becoming. It's not a productivity hack or a wellness trend. It's Cameron's morning pages grown into a full practice — a way of living intentionally, of refusing to let the lessons die before they arrive.
You carry the buckets. The rain comes when it comes. The duck rises on both. Each loop, you tend the well a little deeper than the last.
The duck is waiting in the well.
The well is yours to tend.
The four steps aren't complicated. The hard part is showing up. Where Was I is the place that makes showing up a little easier.
Start writing — it's free