The Marshmallow Ranch Gazette (Patreon)

Howdy, patrons!

Happy Diwali! Today is the third day of the Hindu Festival of Lights, a celebration of light over darkness, love over hate, good over evil. In this day and age, we need any excuse we can use to promote more goodness in the world, and this is an excellent opportunity. I'm not sure how many of you have coworkers from the Indian diaspora, but it might be appreciated to wish them a happy holiday (albeit belatedly).

I first became aware of Diwali at my last day job, when the sizable Indian-American population spontaneously decided to make a big day out of it. Since then, the popularity of the holiday has grown in a lot of tech companies -- and that's a great thing. At my current day job, we'll have a Diwali celebration at the company meeting this Friday and a full-on Happy Hour at the end of the day. Last year there was a dance performance that my best friend just happened to be included in; it was awesome listening to him describe the rehearsal process and watching the final result on video. I'd even say he caught the dancing bug from the experience. :D

I've been thinking a lot about the various communities we inhabit through our lives, and how we as individuals can encourage those communities to be more open and accepting, to be better. Working on "Crushing The Competition", with its worldwide corporatocracy, helps me imagine what it's like to be inside of a culture that renders you invisible and what it's like to finally step outside of it with the chance to reinvent yourself. In a lot of ways, Ralph's journey was mine four months ago -- it took me some time to find my way in this different environment, but I've really come to love it. It definitely helps that diversity and inclusion is a major focus of the company where I work, from the CEO on down. That kind of leadership, where values are built in to the fabric of the corporation, is actually pretty new to me and it's made a big difference on how I see these kinds of mega-companies. Sure, the amount of power they wield is scary, but they can also be a force for tremendous good. 

The first week of writing this month hasn't gone too great, but to be fair there have been extenuating circumstances. Last weekend I was at a convention, then straight to work after that, and then there's the existential stress of the US mid-term elections. I weathered the craziness as best I could, but truth be told it just means our political situation is going to be a bit more...combative over the next two years. The Democrats have gained a bit of power on the national level, and while I hope they can use it to at least slow the worst abuses of power from the current administration there's no guarantee that will happen. Really, all we can do is our best -- my government isn't going to save the world or end racism, but if enough of us roll up our sleeves and get to work WE just might.

Chapter 8 of "Crushing The Competition" should be up tomorrow or Friday, and this week I'll be posting a lot of the older serials from the past year or so to SoFurry. It would have been nice to run them through an editing pass, but eh -- I'll have to figure out how to incorporate those into my writing process later. For now, there are so many stories to write.

That's it for me, patrons! I hope you're having a great week. See you next time!

-Jakebe