Overwhelmed

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Right. Well. My last post did not age well at all.

I was _not_ "back in action", and in fact the gap between that post

and this post was longer than the previous gap I was apologizing for.

Sigh...

Where have I been?

Well, nowhere really. Definitely in the literal sense. Like most

people I've been +/- housebound since March 2020. I have been quite

busy with work (I'm lucky enough to have a job that is compatible with

lock-downs), but really not much more than usual, at least on average.

I've worked on a few other hobby projects - my actor model machine, my

redcode simulator, an elisp IRC client (yeah I know there are a tonne

already, but I had my reasons), and a few other odds and ends. Why

couldn't I find the time to phlog or at least answer some lambdalab

email?

Looking back, the real reason behind this twice-extended hiatus has

been the (perceived, almost certainly illusory) pressure I've felt to

keep on top of things with Elpher. When I was just hacking on it for

my own sake it was heaps of fun. It was also heaps of fun to see a

few people start to use it and the download counts creep up on MELPA.

But somewhere along the line the pressure to keep up with pull

requests" (to the extent that my crummy system allows) and respond to

feedback started to feel like, well... work.

Which is fine, I don't mind work, but it's not always what I feel like

doing after putting the kids to bed.

And so, I kept putting it off. And the longer I put it off, the

harder it became to pick it up again due to my fear that my inbox

would be full of email from people (rightfully) annoyed at absence...

...Which leads me to today, where I have literally thousands of

unread messages in my lambdalab inbox (most of them from mailing

lists, but doubtless many from real people), heaps of unread feedback

comments on my gopherhole, and lots of unreviewed commits to elpher

and other projects. (Honestly, thank you - and sorry!)

What to do? I derive a tremendous amount of pleasure from interacting

with the indie-net, and I've really missed this over the past year.

I also feel terrible for the people whose emails/patches have gone

unanswered for so long... but I'm trying hard not to think too hard

about this, as the fear of discovering just how pissed off I've made

people is what's been keeping me away.

Thus, I have the following plan for getting things back on track:

1. Start phlogging again. Slowly, and in drips and drabs. No pressure.

(Last part is important!!)

2. Slowly start peaking at "scary" parts of my gopherhole/gemini capsule.

These are the guest books. :-) Breathe. Say to myself, "I am an adult."

3. Look for easy project patches to merge and thank the authors.

4. Look at the bigger patches (that are probably forks by now), thank

the authors, think about the patches and whether I can integrate

them. Part of making peace with all of this might involve simply

accepting that not everything can be integrated into my master

branch, since I can only maintain what I can maintain. More

complex things may have to continue to exist only in forks

maintained by others.

5. Find a way to be happy with my email again.

This may involve having to do a purge. If so, I'm sorry in advance to

anyone who's put time into writing to me during the last year!

Has anybody else experienced this kind of grid-lock? (No doubt you

have, you were just "grown up" enough not to let it overwhelm you!)

Hopefully I'll be able to learn from this and become less ridiculously

fragile.

Here's to future stress-free interneting!