I don’t have any secrets, at least not that I know of, except for one. I can say what this is because no one reads my dispatches. So this is a writing exercise for me, a way in which I, who am my first and maybe only audience, can articulate what this one secret is. If I articulate it to myself, then I might articulate it to others although this is a longshot.

My secret is my ongoing relationship with chocolate. It, like coffee, contains caffeine, a stimulant. I am not, as are coffee drinkers, addicted to chocolate, although I have been known to root around in the food bins for errant chocolate chips. Pete, he knows that I will do this and hides them. If I cannot find any chocolate, I think, just as well. And if I can, well then, let the chips fall where they may.

Pete is generally my chocolate source. I tell him not to buy chocolate, but he sometimes does anyways. I think he’s secretly relieved that I have a vice and therefore is willing, limitedly, to support it.

He brings home dark mint chocolate, with 72% cacao. This is equivalent to eight percent beer. It packs a buzz and is most definitely an upper. I feel energized after I consume a square. I have of late been attempting to take advantage of this because evenings are my least productive time. The trick is to eat the chocolate early enough, so that I don’t later lose sleep. This is always hit or miss.

I become like AI on steroids. I ate some chocolate earlier this evening, and I did get work done. Trifling perhaps, but last night I wrote up an agenda for today’s fundraising meeting and also revised a corporate and an individual donor letter. And today, after the meeting, I wrote up a summation of the meeting. I could not, or maybe would not, have been able to do this without first taking in this drug of choice.

I do not consider my need for this drug to be an addiction because I can do without it. (Does this sound familiar?) Rather, it’s a crutch that I am using to get from work related point A to Point B. I wish it was otherwise, but it is not. And it won’t be until there is a lifestyle change.

This lifestyle change will occur when I have less BLBP work to do. And I’ll have less BLBP work to do when we get a staff. And we will get a staff when we get funding. And we will get funding when the fundraising committee does its job. Well, if the fundraising committee does not do its job, then I will have to pull the fundraising cart by myself. And I if pull the fundraising cart by myself, I will have to eat more chocolate because cart pulling will require a greater expenditure of energy.

I have been way too honest in this dispatch. But if it is of value to others, well so be it.

Next: 47. 2/16/25: A Quasi Revelation