GHDR Report 1111: Living In The Mud

⊕ show captionAbout the Photo // I’ve been feeling like I’m running out of time to get my life on track. I’ve been surrounding myself with comforting objects to help me metaphorically find my way home. I found my old yellow Lamy Safari fountain pen, which can only be a good omen?

Mew! It’s time for the November Groundhog Day Resolution (GHDR) Report! This is the second-to-last report for 2026, so it’s a good time to take stock of the year. I’ll start with a recap, and then I’ll get into this month’s insights.

2026 Year-to-Date Recap

The overall pattern for GHDR is enthusiastic planning followed by ever-slowing progress, and this year is no exception.

February: Declaring intent to have more human interaction

At the start of the year, I declared that finding motivation through human connection is the essential spark I needed. I don’t like working in a vacuum. In hindsight, I may need people to co-regulateCo-regulation is when one person’s emotional state affects that of another and vice versa. In my case, my isolation from like-minded people may be contributing to my emotional mood swings. my emotions so I have a more positive attitude.

May-June: Reframing the Business Activity as Running a Spaceship

Defining career next steps is very much on my mind. I’ve come to the conclusion that working for myself is the best outcome, as this would let me accommodate my ASD Level 1Autism Spectrum Disorder Level 1 is the most recent clinical diagnostic term for what was called Asperger’s Syndrome. The traits described in clinical literature describe this in terms of deficit and disability, but from the lens of what is considered “normal social behavior” rather than the different way autistic brains process the world. This leads to a mismatch in communication styles and social expectations that is difficult to overcome. traits.

I tried to reimagine my work-related skills in a non-work context. I picked two fanciful childhood interests, the hospitality industry and stories involving spaceships.

The result was a story-to-live-by about Being the Captain of a ShipSee the April 30 entry Reframing Chores as Ship Operations. with warp engines powered by human interaction. Previously, I didn’t include human interaction as an energy source in any of my models.

July-August: Launching The Ship

Putting the story-to-live-by into action was difficult. I found that the process was dissatisfying because my progress was slow. After the first week, the novelty of the grand idea was not sufficient to reliably energize me. Focus faded, despite me liking the story quite a lot!

The insight: the sheer scale of The Ship and its Universe was far beyond my day-to-day capabilityThe massive GHDR Report 0606 and its several appendices will provide more detail than you probably want to read, so it never felt like I was making any meaningful progress. If you have an epic idea, the progress needs to feel epic. I can’t complete an epic task every day, so I could not meet the requirements for epic scale.

In response, I downsized the plan from Star Trek scale to A Cat Running a Small ShopI’ve mentioned this before as The Story of Cat and Girl. The concept has evolved considerably since then!. The requirements for progress are far more achievable, and are also aligned with my interest in the IndieWeb MovementThe Indie Web is a broad movement of independent makers, artists, and writers who own their own website infrastructure so they can express themselves without interference from corporate interests..

September-October: Unexpected Health Issues

Just as I was getting comfortable with the new idea, I was beset by family issues that triggered a severe bout of bronchitis and suspected GERDGastroesophageal reflux disease aka GERD is when acid from the stomach works its way up your esophagus. In my case, I seemed to be suffering from laryngopharyngeal reflux (LPR) when the particles of acid enter my larynx and lungs, creating a very similar sensation to bronchitis. I’ve been controlling it through posture, diet, portion size, and elimination of a lot of foods..

It has taken me many weeks to recognize and mitigate the problem, so I am on the mend. However, I’ve lost a lot of stamina and mental clarity. I’m working on recovering that day by day.

Other Setbacks

In addition to the GERD thing, I had been processing other depressing facts of life. One is related to career and identity, and the other is related to remembered failures. I’ll list them below as setbacks that my mind has been spiraling through over and over.

Setback: The Uncertainty of Finding New Work

Since last August, I have not had a major source of income. With the rapid development of AI, many of my old skills have become devalued commodities. My direction is unclear.

To keep moving, I maintained a software project I called SRI-BOX to repackage my past JavaScript work into a nice platform for keeping my skills warm while also trying out different AI coding tools. An unexpected wrinkle was that the underlying tech stack I was using was canceled because Cloudflare bought the developers and killed the project. This blow invalidated a lot of my work, and self-defeating thoughts like “why bother” and “are my skills even relevant in 2026” started a depressive spiral.

Setback: The Hindsight of Having Never Done Anything Truly Great

Because I cannot let go of seeing patterns, I started to remember all my failed projects. Looking back, I could see where my undiagnosed autistic/Asperger’s traits had created disconnection with people. At the same time, I questioned whether the work I had done had been genuinely worth anything at all. Perhaps people were just being polite?

To be fair to myself, in the business context of limited time and budget I had delivered what I said I would, and could justify every decision. However, I feel I have been kidding myself about the quality of the work itself, and that hurts my soul.

Continuing to spiral, I questioned whether I even had the mental capacity to stick through discomfort to see difficult tasks to the end. These thoughts cover things like learning to play the guitar, doing advanced math, or even learning the rules of a board game. I felt I had been deluding myself into thinking that I was clever enough to do things, but I had simply dodged the difficulty and stayed weak.

As someone who claims to pursue excellent and wonderful things, this was another body blow to my self-esteem.

Setback: The Recognition that I am a Poor Fit for Mainstream Society

Lastly, I remembered past failures of communication, another casualty of undiagnosed autism/Asperger’s. My focus on project outcomes and data over how people want to feel comforted created barriers. While some found value in my occasional cleverness, I thought that most of the time I was just shooting myself in the foot.

I’m highly sensitized to it now, and it is making me miserable because I realize that most interaction requires presenting for the comfort of others, not being myself. This is a common lament of the self-reported Autistic community, so at least I’m not alone in it.

But that said, I don’t really understand why people put up with me at all. How can I seek human interaction when I am apparently so bad at responding to it?

Setback: Frailty of Body and Mind

With the health and career setbacks freshly on my mind, I became more aware of my aging body not being able to perform. I would only get sicker, I thought. My isolation was not doing my mental state any favors, and my lack of stick-to-it-ness meant that exercise would be difficult to stick to. As it was, my depressive spiral made getting out of bed every morning the major hurdle of the day.

And with that, I hit the bottom of the spiral. But things have been looking up! I managed to control GERD better and my strength started to come back. I noticed that I could walk full speed at the supermarket again. I got a few things done every day, and I saw that as a positive trend. I was at least treading water instead of sinking.

Recovering from Depression

When I’m feeling listless and depressed, I find that looking outside my normal interests can nudge me into a better mental directionI’m also cagey enough to know that the new direction can be a form of avoidance, so I stay mindful of that. The trick is to apply the new direction to something I’ve been trying to fix instead of just escaping reality..

Since I was physically and mentally fatigued, I allowed myself to passively consume media instead of forcing myself to make things. With my extremely low reserves, consuming media was what I could do. I was lucky enough to stumble across several boosts, which I’ll itemize below.

Boost: Observing the Shape of Work

While bedridden, I found one of those Manhwa recapsIn English, manhwa refers to the Korean version of comics. For Japan, the term is manga. For China, the term is manhua. Each country’s graphic novels reflect the history and culture of each society, so I find it interesting to compare them. about a South Korean college student in Incheon who magically received a free piece of “money intelligence” every day. The tip could be as simple as “someone threw away a present in a bush” to “an item will become very popular” to “there is a rare artifact at the antique market in stall B21.” However, profiting from the tip required considerable effort to be in the right place at the right time.

My takeaway from the 24 hours of recap was that there was a shape of working to make profit that I had never quite seen before. As he gathers more capital, he is able to invest in larger operations. The trusted contacts he makes along the way help him find other trusted people, and everyone profits.

For myself, I have always found the work of business (particularly e-commerce and marketing) unglamorous and boring, but this manhwa recap got me thinking about it again. While it is clearly a power fantasy, there are aspects of truth in doing the work and finding trusted partners. Trusted partners and shared profit make things easier.

Boost: Witnessing Excellence and Care in a Game

I can now sit upright at a computer, but find it difficult to concentrate. My theory was that a video game would help keep my brain working without having to think too hard. This would help me stay awake longer, sort of like a mental pacemaker.

I picked the 2018 game Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I had remembered liking the first two games in the trilogy, and it was super cheap. I was impressed by the fantastic job it does in portraying the astonishing physicality of the main character, Lara Croft. The narrative storytelling and character facial animation are also extremely good, as are the gameplay mechanics themselves.

I had forgotten that games could be this good, with a high level of polish that made everything gleam. I could imagine the hours and hours of dedicated work the developer spent to make every second of the game clear, enjoyable, and bug-free. Despite its age, Shadow of the Tomb Raider is still a great-looking and great-playing game.

I found this inspiring. While I myself couldn’t hope to make something on this scale or even join a team that made such a thing, it was certainly within my means to make a nice button or small web app that showed that level of care. It would take time and effort, but it was not beyond my grasp if I kept my goals tight.

Boost: The Unbridled Pursuit of Producing with Passion

My local library featured Jeff Belanger, an Emmy-nominated podcaster who produced the New England Legends show. The topic was Getting Started in Podcasting, and as I’d been out of podcasting for almost a decade I figured a refresher would be helpful. Maybe I would meet local podcasters!

The thrust of Jeff’s enthusiastic presentation was to show just how easy it was to start a podcast with a cheap microphone and the free Audacity software. My major takeaway, though, came from witnessing the enthusiasm of his production team, creating oodles of materials and ways to connect with his audience across multiple channels. It turns out that the podcasting scene is largely the same.

Like with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, I was very impressed by how the presenter was genuinely passionate about what he was doing. He had a whole system going with many trusted partners, and his podcast production quality hit every professional production bar.

It was delightful to experience someone in New England chasing legends and having fun doing it. Could I do the same? Could I stick-through-it like this guy had?

Distilling November into New Insights

I think I’m starting to recover from my depressive spiral, thanks to having identified my fears and matched them with positive examples of how others overcame them. I’ve come up with some directives to help me frame the work ahead.

• Living in the Details - This is related to the anxieties about not doing good work. I had thought myself to be detail-oriented enough, but I don’t like muddy paths. And a lot of detailed work can only be done in the mud of uncertainty. I have to learn to love the muddy path, because that’s where polish and excellence come from.

• Inviting Trust, Sharing without Fear - My anxiety about rejection by society is fairly strong, but I have to be brave inviting people to connect to me despite this. My inner world is vast and rich, and it is worth sharing so people can resonate with it. I want to be my neurodivergent, non-binary, minority, nerdy cat-loving self without apology. Fucking terrifying, that, but I think I have to do it.

• Prioritizing My Remaining Time - My mental focus is not what it used to be. I can do maybe 4 hours of deep work on a good day. I have to pay attention to scale (addressed by From Ship to Shop last month) and also living in the details to make progress across tedious, boring e-commerce things. Also, I need to make time to express myself so other people can find me and I can find them. All of this is very muddy, uncertain work, but I can’t avoid it as I have. Unfortunately, this deep work time includes doing taxes and managing healthcare. I have a lot of productivity process to revamp.

Next Steps

I’ve made some decisions about what I can do in the meantime as anchor projects that are strengthened by the new directives:

• SRI-BOX - So Deno support has been sunset by its original developers, but its death is not entirely settled as it’s open source and there’s a year for people to pick up the ball. I can finish the work on my webapp platform and try out Claude Code. The vast majority of the code is portable JavaScript, after all. I’ve already investigated alternative approaches such as a mixed go+node and cell-d, but the Deno runtime is still the cleanest.

• Patreon Focus - I have been thinking about trying a solo podcast, and happened to see that Patreon now supports them. I have been on Patreon from the very beginning but never really used it as a central platform for distributing my digital goods or selling products. As a creator- and community-focused platform, Patreon is really aligned with what I want to do, so I’d like to shift more energy to it. I’ve started posting my yearly digital downloads like The Compact Calendar and NaNoWriMo Word Counting Calendar there again, and I plan on shifting some digital products there too as I canceled Shopify finally because really it kind of sucked the joy out of my life and cost more than I wanted to spend.

There are other projects like continuing to find ways to write more on dsriseah.com and making a local IndieWeb club, which are all about making new connections with people, but I’ll let them happen organically. I’m still recovering my strength, I’m still short on time, and I need to prioritize living in the details and getting covered with mud. Just like Lara Croft in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, right?

So that’s this month’s report! Thanks for sticking through to the end!

INDEX of GHDR 2026 POSTS