Progress Report - Week of 2024/07/28

Hello, all! This one is going to be more of an ADHD/depression report, since both of those things made "progress" pretty. . . nonexistent last week. But it ends with very good news and has good news sprinkled throughout, so here's the rundown!

ADHD SITUATION: So, as I mentioned last week, I'm taking a new medication. Stimulant medication has worked great for me and kept me on the consistent streak of productivity that you've seen for the last several months, but it's very bad for my heart and already put me in the hospital once, so my doctor and I have been working on finding a nonstim medication that will work just as well. The one that I'm on now has been horrible for me so far, but my doctor assured me that it can take a while for it to kick in and that I should stick with it for two more weeks, just to see what happens. I agreed, and that resulted in me having the absolute worst depressive episode I've felt since Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and gave a 6/3 Supreme Court majority to that fucking weirdo loser who used to be president. Long story short, I was useless. Couldn't even bring myself to play video games, let alone do my big boy job talking about big boy cartoons on the big boy internet. So, I spent the week being sad and grumpy, and on Friday. . . it all cleared up. I woke up feeling good. Did some chores. Worked on some personal projects. Had some awful fatigue on Saturday, but I fought through it and had a great day shopping for Halloween stuff with friends. And yesterday was a downright good day! Went thrift shopping with my wife and found a lot of cool costume pieces for a new D&D campaign I'm about to start up.

Which brings us to today! Today is the first day I've tried to work again since falling into that awful depression, and while I don't feel as "capable" as I do when I take the stimulants, my brain isn't outright telling me not to work like it usually does. I don't feel any physical resistance, any pain, or any stress at the idea of making progress on the new video. That said, I do feel very distractible. It's hard getting started because my brain keeps finding new things to latch on to to help me procrastinate, with this progress report being one of them! Since the stimulants did a very good job of keeping me both motivated and focused, it's going to take a minute for me to build up those muscles and start making progress at the rate that we've all gotten used to lately. That said, I'm confident! Things feel good, and I think that with the right amount of effort on my part (or maybe even just the right amount of waiting. It's possible these meds haven't even fully kicked in yet and the effects will get stronger over time), I'll get back to a work/life balance that we can all be happy with. Until then, I'm not going to make any promises about when the video will be out, but unless my brain falls apart again, I would guess sometime in the next three weeks.

SELF-CONGRATULATION AND HUMBLE GRATITUDE: So, I don't think I announced this publicly, but I had two goals at the beginning of this year. My first goal was to release twelve videos by December 31st, and we are on-track to meet or exceed that goal! Uploading one video per month from now until then will get us there, and I'm very much poised to do that. If we fall behind, I have not one but two Weird Anime videos that will be lightning fast to produce, but I honestly expect we'll exceed that number by at least one or two videos, considering how much easier these reviews are to make than my more analytic content. Second, I wanted to raise Patreon support back up to at least $600/month. Patreon support has been falling monthly for a very long time now (for completely understandable reasons. People don't want to pay monthly for videos that come out twice a year), and we came very close to reaching unsustainable levels. I have enough in savings that the future of the channel was never in danger, but I was running a negative income for a while, and now that we've reached that $600/month number, I'm officially willing to say that the channel is off life support and back into the "I'm not constantly panicking" range of economic stability!

Two years ago, I never could've imagined having the level of energy and motivation that I have now, and I'm so happy to see that people are responding to that and appreciating it the same way I do. Thank you all for making this channel possible, and for allowing me to spend the occasionally-highly-limited mental resources that I have talking about cartoons on the internet for all of you to enjoy. Ad revenue and sponsorships are great and all, but it's your consistent support that allows me to make this a full-time job. You're the reason I'm able to make a monthly budget and know right at this moment that I'm going to be able to pay for groceries in September regardless of whether or not Hello Fresh responds to that unsolicited email I sent them about a three-million-dollar multi-media sponsorship deal featuring AI, VR, NFT, and other techy buzz-letters. The continued success of this channel is built on your shoulders. Thanks for that <3

Next week, I plan to have an actual progress report for you, even if it's short. In the meantime, I hope you all have a great week!