If we have a few places in common, be it online chats or the virtual worlds of Resonite, you’ve probably noticed that I’m appearing less and less often. There’s a pretty good reason for that: I’m just so tired.

2025 has been something for me, I got a radio license and callsign, joined the Resonite Team, started to hang out more with friends, went to Eurofurence, but most importantly, in December, I finally got diagnosed with ADHD. Funnily enough, it came after seeking advice for something totally different.

As a result, I got a plethora of pills to take in the morning, but that allows me to finally do something. By that I don’t mean groundbreaking stuff, I mean chores, doing the dishes, cleaning the kitchen after a cooking session, etc. Yes, it’s boring, but honestly, it’s been great so far. I don’t need other people to push me to do something anymore, I can just do it.

I was warned about some side effects including possible hypertension, loss of appetite and others; but so far, the only one I’ve encountered happens in the evening. Of course, there’s no such thing as infinite energy, so starting 17:30-18:00, it all comes crashing down. Can’t do much, just really tired.

That’s why I’m not around much anymore. I’m just trying to find a new rhythm, one in which I wouldn’t be as tired as I am now. That translates to going to bed earlier, eating better, cutting back on some things and doing others slower.

While we’re on the subject of sleep, let’s talk a bit about it. Before getting the ADHD medication, my sleeping schedule was usually from around 2AM to 9AM, about 7 hours of sleep, which seems to be an alright amount. Nowadays, I go to bed way earlier, between 21:00 and 22:00, waking up still around 9AM, so more between 11 and 12 hours of sleep. Quite a drastic change which I’m still getting used to. While more sleep doesn’t always translates to more energy, this time, I just feel like it’s necessary. At some point, I gotta learn to listen to my body and get some rest when it needs some.

There’s also the work thing. At the moment, I basically have two sides: the purple thing that makes CI/CD and code for Resonite; and the other, darker, purple thing that writes CI/CD all day for companies and does trainings for GitHub and GitLab amongst other things. Needless to say, work kinda never stops for me, when I’m done with one, the other is here and I keep doing the same things, just for different projects. This is not healthy in any way, do not do this. This is why I started cutting back and setting proper limits starting about a week ago.

For instance, Sundays were always off-limits for me, now all the weekends are. While I was already doing that before, daily walks are now mandatory (from 45 minutes to an hour of just existing outside). Cons as well are strictly off-limits for work stuff (I’m also too lazy to setup proper development environments on my laptop, so complete win). Nowadays, I might answer or open a GitHub issue or two on weekends, but that’s about it, other personal projects and activities take precedence. For instance, I’ve been having lots of fun being a NCO for the World-Wide Check-In on the Brandmeister talkgroup 91 for DMR radio.

I love my job(s), if I could tell my smaller self that I would work on computers and actually enjoy it, I think she would explode with joy. However, it took me some time to understand that as much as I like it, it’s still work. I need to have some downtime, do something else for a bit, otherwise, as I say so often, I might as well just lose it.

So, sorry if your bug patchset or feature request has been lingering for a while; it might take a bit longer, but you’ll at least have the satisfaction that I have a healthier approach to it. If not, well, too bad, I’m not changing these new rules. You’ll also notice my activity is now more concentrated within the day (Helsinki time) instead of being at outrageous hours.

Of course, I’ll blame the Finnish winter for part of this, being in a near-constant state of night is tiring, that’s why I try scheduling my daily walks when there’s some light (originally planned to say “sun”, but weather is mostly grey mush these days around here). Also we’re in that moment in which days are finally getting longer, and soon enough, it’ll finally reach some more reasonable rhythm (at least for me, not being a native of Finland).

As a last thing, if you’ve recently asked me how I’m doing, you probably heard back “Honestly great”, or “Doing good” instead of the usual “Tired”. Well that’s the thing, I’m not tired all the time anymore, just at the times I honestly expected to be. I’m sure the overall situation will improve in the future; hanging out more AFK with friends already does a lot. In any case, that diagnosis was definitely a net positive.