What's Next For This Page

This is going to be a bit of a long read. I'm sorry. There's no TL;DR because everything is important.

What's Happened

First of all, I'm deeply sorry for the extremely long hiatus ^^. I've been dealing with major changes in my life, which, while positive, has taken up a huge chunk of my free time.

One of the biggest events these past few months is that I realized a long-time dream of mine to study in the computing field instead of humanities. I am now majoring in Software Engineering!

I am overjoyed to start again at the same university I arrived at 2 years ago, but for a different purpose.

Thank You To Everyone

This would not have been possible without everyone who has supported me, both financially and emotionally. This community has given me the self-confidence I needed during times I was in a bad place mentally, and it helped me realize my biggest passion in life for programming. I am also grateful to my patrons, both current and former, for helping me continue this hobby that I love in place of a part time job.

Things NEED to Change

I won't deny that I've neglected, not just this Patreon, but modding in general, for far too long. Even Pandora, which is basically my love child, was not updated for over two months during the tumultuous start of term.

During this time, I'll be honest, I lost most of my drive for modding. Not just because there were bigger priorities, but also because I felt like I was in a healthier mindset where I no longer needed to depend on modding as a source of emotional validation; in other words, as a mental crutch.

After thinking on it I realized that I don't think I'll be able to reproduce the same level of drive as I was before. There's a fine line between hobby and obsession/attachment, and I think I got too far into the latter to the point where it was taking up all my energy.

It can't be like this anymore. I don't have the time and I'm no longer the same person. But I still want to keep modding.

So... here's

THE PLAN:

1. No More One-Man Army

I can't make all the ideas that pop up in my head at the middle of the night. I'm only one guy sitting at the computer and I've been greedily pushing on more and more projects onto myself that I don't have the time to realize. I've found myself constantly hopping back and forth several projects and I believe this to be a major factor to my month long burnouts. From now on,

Mod RELEASE/UPDATES on:

• The 15th of every month

• The 25th of every month

This way, there will be at least two posts of mod content every month. Sometimes more, but never less.

Before, I would get more stressed and stressed the longer time went on between posts because I felt guilty for my supporters, despite how many I already made that month.

Sticking to a regular schedule will hopefully stop myself stressing and making shit things for the sake of "getting one out". It should also help put people's minds at ease about when I will drop.

2. No Mod Left Behind

I know there are projects that have spent an ungodly amount of time behind my page. I'm going to focus the modding time I have to get these projects to a state where they can be out in public.

This also ties into my next point which is...

3. No More Sprinting For Perfection

I'm not saying I'll half-ass my work from now on, but I'm going to stop this bad mindset of "it's not perfect or polished enough to release", and also the mindset of "I'll wait to come back to this mod until I can allocate a huge uninterrupted period of time to work on it nonstop" (ends up being basically never).

This leads to a lot of projects never seeing the light of day. This can't do. From now on, I'm settling on an "over time" approach.

If a mod has some minor bugs, I can always iron them out over time after release. If it's lacking some of the features I personally want to add, but it's already in a release-ready state, I'll release it and maybe add those features in the future (or I might change my mind and decide not to). If there are mods sitting there that I want to update, I'm not going to wait for the "perfect opportunity" any longer.

I'll do what I can, over time.

The CONCLUSION

I know that was a lot of promises. I won't fault anyone for waiting to see if I'll actually deliver on them before supporting me or my work seriously.

I won't blame anyone for leaving either; at the end of the day I neglected my patrons for almost three months and that was entirely 100% my fault; this post isn't to make excuses, it's to explain why, and what I'm going to do going forward.

If you read this far; thank you for your time. And as usual, I'd like to thank everyone who's supported me so far. I hope for many more good days, and many more fun mods to come.

Thank you.