Stagnation or Incubation?

Stagnate:  to stop developing, growing, progressing, or advancing: as in "My mind is stagnating from too much T.V."

I was complaining to my friend Vickie on the phone yesterday about how I am sooooo over this  too-long-of-a-broken leg vacation.  How I'm so upset over not being able to grow my real estate business while I've been nursing my leg.  How I've not been able to write any songs, or practice my guitar, or try writing a novel.  How now that I'm finally attempting to walk with a cane at 11 weeks, the pain is worse than ever.  I'm not progressing, I'm just stagnating.

And Vickie said, "Maybe you're incubating."  (Huh?)

Vickie went on to say that when she was pregnant with her only child it was a very difficult and sometimes painful nine months, but of course the birth of her daughter was well worth the long process of incubation.  (I thought, oh please dear God, don't let this pain go on for nine months!!  Coincidentally, I recently read an article that claimed breaking a femur  is more painful than child birth...).

My wise friend Vickie continued,  "Maybe you're just incubating, you know, you're healing, and then when you're done healing, you'll be a creative genius, and you'll be more productive than ever!"  This made me feel better. 

So I looked up incubation and found these definitions that I really liked: 
1. incubation - Latin incubare, the source of incubate, literally meant "lie down on"; incubation once had the sense of sleeping in a sacred place or temple for oracular purposes, 2. incubate - grow under conditions that promote development,  3. To form or consider slowly and protectively, as if hatching.

So I'm incubating.  More like a chicken with her head cut off, screaming the sky is falling, but I'm incubating!