Welcome to the Gathering Pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast. I'm Martha Beck.

How was your day today? Because mine sucked. It really, no, it's not been the best day, yes.

First of all, you know how sometimes things just pile up together?

First of all, my entire family did something unheard of.

They went out of town.

Like, what?

The dogs and I are beside ourselves.

We're like, what happened to the pack?

No one ever leaves?

What?

You know, like our whole pandemic psychology is crumbling. But I wasn't going to be distracted. No, no, I was going to get a lot of work done.

I was going to wax the kitchen floor. Oh, yes. And organize all the bathroom shelves and do all the

laundry forever. Plus, I have a book proposal that I have to

write now. Like, I started yesterday and it's due tomorrow. No, I started months ago, but I haven't been

actually writing. And my agent gave me a gentle nudge yesterday, a couple days ago, hello. And I was like,

oh yeah, all right, I got to do this. And writing a

book proposal is harder than writing an actual book because you have to think through the actual

book when it doesn't exist. And it's very hard to think through something it doesn't exist.

Then I put the wrong stuff on the floor and like slipped and nearly brained myself.

The dogs were hysterical, not in a fun way.

You know, like, oh my God, where is everybody that counts way?

So then they nestled up against me and knocking me over everywhere I would go.

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