Belated Update
I don't know how many people will actually read this, but I think it's important to catch everyone up to speed rather than leave people wondering why I seemed to disappear.
To make a very long story short, in early March I had a psychotic break. This was resolved a few days later, but it brought two important things to light.
The first thing was that I've apparently never dealt with some trauma from 20+ years ago. I thought I moved on a long time ago, and in some cases didn't even realize what I experienced was traumatic. That's been proven wrong, and I'm getting professional help to deal with that.
The second thing is that I never dealt with that trauma because I buried it under a big pile of toxic productivity. In other words, I kept myself busy being "productive" when very little actually was produced - the mental health equivalent of getting lost in development hell.
Trying to navigate 14+ huge projects and make them all professional quality is impossible, but I did it anyway and wondered why I was always teetering on the verge of burnout.
This also infected the way I was trying to handle my comics and my software development, so for my own piece of mind, they've been on hold and may be on hold for some time.
Right now, I need to establish a new, healthy normal. I've been working on a few things - a passion project, and a few art related things - that are aimed at trying to curb this habit of toxic productivity. In the case of the art projects, it's also able re-learning how to play with creativity.
None of these new projects involve deadlines, requirements, or even regular updates, making them a supposedly safe haven while I get grounded again.
