I felt like the world’s biggest dork. I was standing in a field trying to weaponize the love I had for my girlfriends while Summer watched me with an amused smirk. The amused smirk was not helping. The intense feeling of self-consciousness was not conductive to my efforts.

“Is you being here strictly necessary?” I asked through grit teeth. Summer seemed to delight in my frustration.

“If the whole point of this is to do it in a fight, you can’t let yourself get embarrassed,” Summer said, “So yes, me being here is necessary.”

I barely resisted the urge to groan. Well, if I was gonna be powered by love and friendship, no better place than Equestria, I suppose. Now if only I wasn’t cripplingly in my own way. There had to be something I could do to quash this squirming mass of conflicting feelings in my chest and focus on the power of love.

If only I didn’t want to bury myself in a ditch just for having that thought cross my mind. As much as I enjoyed MLP and magical girls shows and such, trying to do it myself was, as the kids would say, cringe as hell. Or at least it felt that way to me.

Oh to have the kind of simpleminded confidence to do this without wanting to lose my lunch. But alas, I am the mass of mental health crises that that I am. There are those who say a man is naught but a miserable pile of secrets. I am a miserable pile of psychoses.

That said, for all my bellyaching, I still prefer me as I am and since coming to Equestria my mental health has been slowly getting better. Probably has nothing to do with my current predicament. Naught but a personality reprogramming could save me from this particular agony.

“Do you even know if this will work? You might be putting yourself through this for nothing,” Summer commented unhelpfully.

“Yes, it’ll work,” I replied shortly, unable to suppress a blush. Summer noticed and raised an eyebrow.

“Sounds like there’s a story there,” Summer said.

“I may or may not have singed some of Flutter’s feathers while we were cuddling the other day,” I admitted, my blush burning brighter, “So I know I can generate the heat I need.”

“I’d say so,” Summer said, her expression torn between impressed and a desire to laugh at me.

“So it’s just a matter of doing it on purpose and on command,” I continued.

“That does tend to be the hard part of these sorts of things,” Summer nodded

“Any tips, o wise one?” I asked with a bit of sarcasm.

“Unfortunately, this is something you have to figure out for yourself,” Summer shrugged, “You already know the basics of meditation.”

“Darn, just my luck, no easy magic solution,” I said dryly, “The life of a martial artist is truly fraught with peril.”

“You say that, but didn’t you just rescue your girlfriend from Changeling Cultists not too long ago?” Summer pointed out.

“Touché,” I replied. Sunny then got up and brushed herself off.

“I’m gonna go get some lunch. You wanna come with?” She asked.

“Nah, I want to keep thinking about this for a bit longer,” I replied.

“Alright, but there’s also something to be said for mentally resetting when you get stuck, coming back with a fresh perspective,” She told me.

“Sound advice, now if only I could follow it so easily,” I said ruefully.

“You’ll figure it out. Then we can get back to teaching you how to kick and punch real good,” She giggled.

“That is a part of my training that’s been sadly neglected for the past couple of months,” I nodded.

“And I know you’ve been wanting to work in some strength training for your female form,” Summer added.

“Might be better if I multitask, do the strength training and think about how I’m gonna do this power of love thing,” I mused.

“I’ve heard worse ideas,” Summer replied, “And now I really am going, because I am hungry.”

“Alright, talk to you later,” I bid and she walked off.

I had a lot of thinking to do and a lot of options, but it was better than the lot of thinking and no options I had been stuck with before. I should probably do something nice for Thistle. Even if she had been unbearable smug for the last couple of days, she still got me out of a jam. Maybe I could make some terra preta soil for her tree? I’m sure she’d like that.

“Probably a better use of my time than bashing my head against a brick wall too,” I muttered to myself. So I got up and went home to do just that.

Another month, another slew of issues. So at the beginning of the month my internet decided to kick the bucket. Nothing I did could fix it. I called my ISP. They sent out a tech. The tech couldn't fix it. The sent out a higher level tech. That tech couldn't fix it. Finally the area supervisor showed up and I bought a new modem and my internet has more or less been OK since then. I'm now going to have them come out and redo the hardline to my house so I can put my modem in a place where I can get ethernet on my computer.

So yeah, I basically had no internet this month. Fun. As someone who works from home and relies on internet to do his job...less fun.