The Marshmallow Ranch Gazette

Volume 7, Issue 6 -- Thursday, June 29th, 2023

Howdy patrons!

So…that was interesting.

It's hard for me to talk about my experiences as a neurodivergent rabbit because it's tough to tease out which behaviors are part of my alternate brain chemistry and which are just personal failings I haven't learned to deal with. The reality is that you can't tease out a singular cause, or even a primary one, for this sort of thing. Still, it's easy to fall into the trap of laying all of your mistakes and regrets at the feet of your mental illness. I can't do this thing due to factors literally outside of my control, something like that. But I'm not sure I buy that. Each of us has a responsibility to be the kind of positive people we want to see more of in the world, and struggling with my mental health doesn't absolve me of that.

I'm sorry for missing yet another week of the Patreon serial. I really want to be more professional this time around, and for me that means regular updates when I've promised them; prompt, clear communication from me when I'm likely to miss an update; and genuine appreciation and consideration of the feedback I get. I've failed with the first two so far this month, and while I know most of you have been very understanding, I still feel the need to be accountable. This isn't the way I want to run the Patreon, and I'll make a more concerted effort to be better in the future.

I had what we'll call a "productivity crash" over the last two weeks. For some reason I just didn't have the spoons to keep up with the schedule I had set for myself and filled the days with procrastination and consistently disapproving self-talk. Every time I opened my Scrivener file for the serial my anxiety got the better of me and Monkey Mind found a million things to be distracted with instead. I haven't written a lot in the past two weeks, and over that time I've gotten in my head about my craft again.

These crashes tend to happen when I suddenly run out of spoons to handle things. The parade of rejection emails for finding a day job took their toll after a while. I haven't been getting great sleep for most of the month, which makes it a lot harder to concentrate during the day. My lovely husband has had a stressful time at his day job. And our social calendar, strangely enough, has been packed this summer. I think everything combined to just throw me into an overwhelmed blur for a little while.

Coming back from a years-long writers' block doesn't happen overnight. I understand that rebuilding a writing practice will take longer than a month and there are bound to be fits and starts here and there. I understand and accept this. Still, I'm hoping to get to a place where I have a small backlog of episodes to post so the next time this crash happens it won't result in another delay.

That's the trick for right now. ADHD makes it really hard to finish things ahead of time -- my brain doesn't reward me for completing a task on its own, and I often need the stimulation of a pressing deadline to jump-start my motivation. I often try to "hack" my situation so I'm publicly accountable for delivering something by a certain date; the pressure makes it a lot easier to just get started on something. If I'm trying to "adult" and make sure I have stuff done well ahead of time, Monkey Mind is bound to find something a lot more shiny.

Anyway, I'm back to rebuilding my routine and writing consistently every day. I don't have the next episode of Swiftie's Intergalactic written, but I'll do my best to have it done by Tuesday. Until then!