💾 Archived View for thelambdalab.xyz › phlog › 2021-07-19-Overwhelmed.txt captured on 2023-09-08 at 15:56:50.
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Overwhelmed ----------- 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!