By Sandy Lender

I’m not pretending to be a victim. Instead, I’ll tell you I’ve experienced the surreal anxiety of fighting for my place in many scenarios while being told I’ve been handed my successes. Even now, fellow content creators will roll their eyes and call me a privileged white woman. On one hand, okay, that’s fair. I recognize I’ve received benefits in the past based on the color of my skin. Let me give you a blatant example.

In 2006, I was privileged to be driving a Saturn I’d paid off about a year or so prior, to a salaried job I was privileged to have at a university where my Catholic boss was looking for reasons to fire a Southern Baptist, so I was hurrying to get there early. I was not only speeding, but I whipped out to go around a slow truck in a no-passing zone. As I sped in front of the truck, I passed a police officer parked in someone’s driveway.

Being aware of what was coming, I pulled over before the officer caught up to me. When he approached my window, I apologized. I knew I was in the wrong. I told him, “I’m sorry officer. I know I’m in too big of a hurry. I know better. Here’s my stuff.” I handed him my license and registration without him asking for it.

He came back to my window a few minutes later telling me to slow down, to obey the law, and telling me he appreciated me pulling over quickly in a safe place. He let me go with a warning. And I'm aware that is predicated on not only the fact I owned up to what I did wrong, but on my race, as well. It’s the climate we live in.

I did get fired from that job. I wasn’t the right flavor of Christian and my husband at the time was moving, thus my boss assumed (without asking me) that I knew he was moving and was moving with him. I’ve had people tell me being fired from a Catholic university for being Southern Baptist isn’t a violation of my rights. Having that university’s HR department talk to the husband I’d filed to divorce about my benefits, severance package, and potential continued health coverage behind my back wasn’t a violation of my rights. And so on. It’s a bit much to go into in this essay. The point is I was told to let it go and lose my house because it would be “easier” than to fight that battle while going through cancer treatment.

I fought my way back from the illness (twice) and the hit to my career and financial life.

I currently have a great job I enjoy, an old house I’m working hard to pay off, an older-model car that hasn’t killed me yet, a struggling side-hustle to which I give every ounce of energy I can spare, and a lowering tolerance for the dichotomy happening in marketing these days. The dichotomy exists when responses teeter between “you don’t deserve to succeed because you don’t have enough victimhood as a white woman” and “you don’t deserve to succeed because women have been handed all the success already.”

I beg your finest pardon?

At what point is it okay to tell anyone they can’t be allowed to succeed because other members of their class have been handed success before them?

Anyone telling me I don’t get to excel because some other woman (no matter her level of melanin) excelled in the past can pucker up and kiss my fair ass.

I will keep fighting for the side hustle I’ve dreamt of since I was an eight-year-old girl. Since I was a teen with parents who told me, “No, you can’t be a writer because you have to pursue math or science instead.” Since I was a college student and an advisor told me, “Really, Sandy, what do children’s books have to do with creative writing?” Since I was graduating from college and an older man in a group interview snickered at my resume, tossed it onto the boardroom table in front of him, and asked, “You have an English degree? Are you planning to write the next great American novel?” Since I was a fledgling author and a New York literary agent ten years my junior sat across a table from me and sneered about a detail I mis-spoke in my pitch, saying, “You don’t cure a virus with antibiotics.” Since I was launching a BookTube channel, and the platform moved the goalpost for monetization.

I’m gonna keep fighting for this side hustle I’ve dreamt of my whole life. No matter what anyone thinks of anyone else’s victimhood status, I’m not one. As Helen Reddy sang during my childhood: “I am woman.”

If this kind of storytelling helps with your motivation, I encourage you to check out my motivational business book “Capture Your Dream,” available now. It includes anecdotes from colleagues and me, as well as inspiration and exercises to help your work-life balance while you stack your goals and go for your side-hustle dreams.

Blinking at the bloodied reptile between his wagon wheels, Erik cursed his luck. The horses he’d stolen in Mar Dell were champing at their bits, pulling erratically against the brake he’d set, and generally whinnying their distress to any creature who might be watching from the forest. He glanced to the colorful foliage drifting on the breeze, expecting to see this creature’s parent crashing toward him.

A disheveled ruffian peered over the side of the wagon instead, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “What was that? D’you lose a wheel?”

Erik shrugged off his cloak, hoping the breeze would lift his muslin shirt suddenly sticking with sweat to unwashed skin. “I think it’s a dragon.”

His companion disagreed. “That’s not possible. The slayers hunted ’em all out a hundred winters ago. None left.”

Erik spread his arms wide to show the evidence before him. “What else would you call this?”

“By the gods, man! You ran over a dragon? How’d you not see—”

“It came out of nowhere.”

“You better drag its carcass to nowhere.”

Erik cringed against Jackore’s sarcasm and countered with, “You don’t think it’s good eatin’?”

Jackore pointed toward the cornfield behind Erik. “Hide it or the adult’s gonna find and eat you.”

Erik laid his cloak next to the fledgling. While he manuevered the child-sized creature onto it, he griped about Jackore’s culpability in this mess also making him a juicy meal for a dragon parent. “You could help me.”

“I’m not getting its blood on me. You think the mother won’t smell that when it comes to heal it?”

“Heal it? What are you on about?”

Jackore lowered the pitch of his voice almost an octave. “Bards in the pubs tell of the old wyrm mothers laying a hundred eggs and if even one went missing, they’d leave the ninety-nine to go find it. They could track and heal like nothing else in this world. Dragons were full of magic only the gods understand.” Returning his voice to his normal whine, he finished. “I want nothing to do with it.”

Erik paused to wipe his brow, wishing he’d stolen a sword while in Mar Dell’s marketplace. “Fine. You hide up there doing nothing.”

He grumbled some more while he pulled the makeshift gurney into the field. It took time and effort to drag the thing over felled stumps no farmer had removed and far enough into the vegetation that the crushed stalks left in his wake could be hidden from the roadway, too. The only good fortune in the whole situation was the unharvested crop rustled above his head as he hid his crime.

It should prove good cover.

The juvenile’s robust colors of orange and red mimicked the turning leaves of the forest, which Erik told himself was half the reason he didn’t see the thing dart in front of the horses in time to stop. The richness of the colors also made him worry about the efficacy of his lightweight cloak hiding the creature. He tucked its spiked tail under the fabric, cursing at a scale pricking his finger.

“This’ll have to do. There’s no time for diggin’ graves. I’ve gotta get further down the roadway before your momma comes ’round.”

He left the dragon — cloak and all — between rows of fresh-smelling corn and scurried back. The horses stood silently quivering under a lather of sweat with their nostrils flared and ears laid back, which he considered an improvement. Jackore’s lack of complaint was welcome, too.

He quickly kicked some of the roadway’s sand-and-pebble over the blood to conceal the accident and jumped to the driver’s board. “Good riddance,” he said. “Let’s go.”

The horses whinnied their unhappiness, but moved forward as directed. He drove them more quickly than before, keeping an eye on the forest to his left. If dragon’s fire were to accompany the breath of the wind, it would likely come from there.

One gnomon’s shadow later, his heart rate had returned to normal, the breeze was starting to bite, and he called to Jackore. “You can stop cowering under your blankets. We’re plenty far from the act and plenty safe.”

When Jackore didn’t respond, Erik grumbled under his breath and turned on the seat. The threadbare blankets Jackore had insisted on bringing instead of a cloak were missing. As was Jackore.

Erik yanked the reins to stop the horses. A twinge of lightning shot through him, searing his muscles. His heart rate began racing and he jumped from the wagon as a pair of winged reptiles dropped behind it—one the size of Erik’s favorite tavern.

When the dragons’ feet thudded on the ground, spraying sand and sound, the horses bolted.

The smaller of the two beasts had a mess of corn silks sticking to dried blood on its scales. It pointed at Erik, as if singling him out from among a host of men. The larger one lowered its head and bared its teeth.

With a shriek, Erik turned to run after the galloping horses and bouncing wagon. It was a useless reaction. Dragons are full of magic only the gods understand.

The End

(c)2024SandyLender

(This story takes place in the world of Onweald, which you can learn more about on The Choices Series page.)

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Six days before Christmas, Winston the Eclectus parrot let out his "I see someone on our front porch" shrieks of dismay while I was working in the office/Florida room at the back of the house. No one knocked on the front door (or the window, which, if you've been following along at home, you know is an option with one of my neighbors) and I was not expecting a delivery that day, so I didn't hurry myself away from work to deal with the porch. About an hour later, I mosied into the front room, looked out the front window, and stared at a large jack-o-lantern style pumpkin sitting on my patio table.

Before I go any further, lemme offer a touch of backstory.

A few years ago, but while I lived here in Citrus County, an enterprising ring of burglars had been going around placing white stones in front of houses to determine which houses had humans coming and going during holidays and popular vacation times. If the stones were moved away from doorsteps or high traffic areas, it meant people were home. If you didn't notice the white stone and move it...you in danger, girl.

This "white stone burglary" concept didn't immediately occur to me as I stood looking out the window at the squash that would be clearly visible from the street as an odd and orange decoration in the middle of nothing else on my porch. Instead, I was pleased that someone had gifted me a pumpkin for Christmas. I bebopped outside to see who it was from.

It was from no one.

There was no tag.

There was no label.

The only sticker on the pumpkin was from the nursery where it had originated, and that had no name or greeting or indication that the person leaving this on my porch knew me or that I knew him/her. I looked around the porch for a minute to see if maybe a note had blown away? No. That's when the "white stone burglary" concept tugged at my brain. Had some enterprising group of thieves upped their game and placed pricy pumpkins on porches instead of rocks? That seemed like quite a financial investment to me...but...

Obviously, I'd have to take this pumpkin inside to let the burglars know, "Yes, the homeowner is here. Don't try to rob the place."

Then my paranoid brain told me to put on the brakes.

What if this pumpkin was laced with fentanyl or some other stupid drug and as soon as I wrapped my arms around it (I'm telling you guys, this squash was large), I succumbed to an overdose? What if the enterprising thugs were waiting in the park across the street to see me collapse...

So my stupid butt went back in the house, put on a long pair of dishwashing gloves, collected the pumpkin without hugging it, put it in the bathtub to wash it down, and, when there were no drug-induced incidents, I hacked it up for my chickens. Clyde and the Bonnies approached it with about the same trepidation I did, but enjoyed it thoroughly once they realized I wasn't trying to burglarize or poison them.

In fantastic news, my neighbor who uses the ladder to peek over the privacy fence texted me the following day. She wanted to tell me she'd left a pumpkin on my porch for my chickens. Bless her heart. I took her some cookies. But I elected not to tell her of my paranoid insanity handling the gift with gloves and disinfectant.

I hope everyone's New Year is off to a great start!

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