The Marshmallow Ranch Gazette

Volume 5, Issue 18 -- Thursday, October 1st, 2020

Howdy, patrons!

It feels like last week was the start of September. If you ask what I've been doing with my time, I'm not sure I could tell you. You live. You do things. I get up, work, cook dinner, play or run a Dungeons and Dragons game or watch a movie or play a game, and I go to sleep. 

Somewhere in there, a little at a time, progress is made. During morning meditation, a small shift unlocks something inside you. Life gets a little bit easier because you're more present inside it. A work project is suddenly completed and launched; you've made a small change to my company that makes it work better. Focusing on speed when cooking dinner is an object lesson in prioritizing and multitasking; by using something fun to learn a valuable skill, everything else becomes a little easier. Laundry gets done a bit faster. Things around the burrow become a little cleaner.

Then the batteries run dead. The little dynamo of good habits sputters inexplicably. Sleep is rare at night and precious in the morning. You wake too late to meditate. You stumble into work bleary and scattered, and some days it's all you can do to handle a few angry customers. After work you're exhausted. You sink into some oblivion -- YouTube, or Animal Crossing -- so you don't have to think about too much. Every bit of bad news, of which there are plenty, makes the hole feel a little deeper, a little steeper.

But you climb out. You start meditating again. You can take a moment to remember where and who you are. You rediscover how to make better choices. You cherish the time you have with your husband as he reads to you while you cook. You learn again how to let go of the things outside your control. You remember the Buddha nature in yourself, in all things. You begin to write again. 

But just like that, it's the end of September and several weeks since you've posted anything even though you promised it would come before now. You know how marginally interesting the last thing was, and you can't imagine any satisfaction coming from another two thousand words of substandard, vague mush. You feel like you're stealing people's money. You've broken the contract you've made. Again.

You've learned to take a breath, so you take one. You can only work to make up for the mistakes you've already made, so you resolve to. You recommit yourself to consistency, showing up every day for at least 30 minutes, no matter what. Right now, you can imagine yourself crawling to the laptop on days you don't want to. 

But you also know that one day soon, the dynamo will stop. And you'll have to take a week, maybe more, trying not to let the world overwhelm you. You will only have the energy for a few angry customers. You fear you'll never be consistent, because your brain won't let you. 

You have to let that go, too. Trust in the Way, move forward with the right intention, take the right action whenever you can, and let the rest take care of itself. 

It's really hard not to care about things so much you can't deal with them. You have to keep perspective, especially now. You write silly stories for friends who want to read them, and you have another one ready today. That's enough for this week.