Twenty Nineteen

It’s harder than you might think to find a date-based stock photo with a tone anything less than “jubilant excitement.” All I wanted was 2019 in a shade of “cautious optimism,” but no. It’s all fireworks and sunrises. This one will have to do.

Welcome to 2019. Since I’m not doing a great job of blogging over the last month, I thought I’d at least get a status update out. Much as Overtired often starts with the “Mental Health Corner,” my instinct is to let you know what’s going on in my brain before getting to other topics.

Brain Stuff

I’ve been dealing with mental health issues more than usual lately, mostly surrounding my ADHD. The meds don’t seem to be working for me anymore, but I’m not convinced my focus issue isn’t more related to depression than ADHD. To top that off, I just found out that my psychiatrist is moving on, leaving me with the terrifying options of going back to the clinic that originally stripped me of all my stimulant meds, or joining a waiting list at a different hospital with no guarantees I won’t get the same treatment. Depressing thoughts, either way, and the fear of the outcome has kept me from making the phone calls. I’m really bad at making phone calls to begin with. Some mental block that makes it really hard to pick up the phone.

I’m trying to convince myself that even if I lose my meds, they haven’t been effective lately anyway. But I know very well from all-too-recent experiences that they’re far better than nothing. I’ve been compensating by using a full-spectrum lamp to combat SAD, exercising regularly, meditating, quitting alcohol completely, and regulating diet. Hopefully all works out well in the end.

So, whatever is going on right now, be it ADHD symptoms or depression, med-related or lifestyle, I’m finding it impossible to tackle more than one thing at once. Thus, as the work that feeds me has been priority, things like writing, blogging, podcasting, even working on new coding projects have temporarily slowed down. That in itself is a source of stress for me. I’ve spent over a decade building up my blog readership, software customers, podcast audience, and the trust and interest of those who follow me. Ceasing content production is not something I have any interest in doing, and failing to produce leads to nagging stress about all the things I’m not doing.

Systematic (and Overtired)

Systematic has been on an unannounced hiatus for a while now. I’ll admit I got a little burnt out, and I’ve been having trouble nailing down sponsors despite a decent audience size. Smile has been a constant supporter of my work, and really what’s kept Systematic going this long, but having a little more income from it would be nice. So what I’m looking at doing is pausing until February, then re-launching with a more season-based approach. 6-8 episode runs, ideally following a single topic. Music, mental health, feminism, ecology… things that interest me and that I’d like to hear from multiple people about. We’ll see if I can sell sponsorships for a season at a time. While I haven’t nailed down the first set yet, hopefully that comes together in January and I can get back to regular publication.

Overtired suffers from its usual scheduling issues. That’s not an official hiatus, we’ll get back to it. I think.

Marked

Marked continues to be a large portion of my income. I’m currently working with renewed zeal on the RTF export capabilities, as well as solving some long-standing issues. The customer base I’ve built up is overall highly supportive and a delight to work with. There’s a new update out right now for everyone except MAS customers (who should see it soon, pending review) that adds the ability to hide the status bar (for a chromeless window in full screen) and a bunch of fixes.

Side note, I know that something broke with list indentation using the GitHub theme. It’s fixed, I’ll have another update out as soon as possible.

Development will continue, even if at a slightly slower pace. Marked is my favorite software to work on right now.

BitWriter

BitWriter is once again stalled. It’s become very frustrating, and in the years it’s taken me to get it off the ground, plenty of competition has popped up. Some of them are really good, too. Carrying this failure has been a huge load on me, but I haven’t been able to give it up yet. I really think that what we have is a solid app that the world needs, and that there’s a large market potential for it, but whenever I hit a snag in the development I get overwhelmed and find myself needing to get back to work that pays more immediately. So, in short, it’s still in progress, just like it has been for years now. For whatever that’s worth at this point.

Looking forward

I don’t want to make it sound like 2018 was a horrible year. Sure, I lost my dog to cancer, continued dealing with the loss of my marriage, smashed my convertible. But I also have a fulfilling and constantly delightful relationship with my girlfriend, a stimulating yoga practice, and I’ve created a lot of things I’m proud of in the last year. Up until the end of the year, I had great successes with my software (featured by Apple, even), exciting Systematic interviews, and a new Audi that I love just as much as my TT.

So despite how depressing this overall update might sound, I have high hopes for 2019. I have new projects currently underway (NDA) that I’m excited about and enjoying working on. I hope to get my mental health back to a point where I can do that and still maintain my blogging, podcasting, and other public endeavors. Thanks for sticking with me this whole time, your continued support has meant the world to me.