June 16 Update (Patreon)

Tangential thoughts alert. Concise update in the last paragraph.

One dark lining to the silver cloud of working as a creator is that you demystify your own process. Back when I was juggling a job and creative work, I had a somewhat clear idea of how much I could get done, but there was some ambiguity. Because various factors got in the way, I didn't see my work rate so much as just progress.

But the more you work, the better you know yourself. I control my schedule and so I know exactly how much I can get done on a bad/average/good day. Vague mental models like "I'll finish this as soon as I can" give way to ones such as "At an average rate I'll finish this in X days." Through a perverse bit of perfectionist alchemy, that average gets converted to a bare minimum.

Working in a state of flow is always fantastic, but my attitude about it has shifted as it becomes more familiar. I remember years ago being amazed how many words I managed to write over a series of multiple days of great flow. Now that I've managed that repeatedly, it's exhilarating during the work, but before/after it's to a degree expected.

All this might seem like it's leading up to an announcement of delays or something, but it's not. Things are actually going really well with TLS 0.44.0 - usually I have a hard time changing gears to get back into the process but it happened much more smoothly than usual. The coming content is filled with a lot of moments I'm eager to share with everyone. ^-^

The rest of the war is big and I'll say a bit more about that later. Based on my knowledge of my process, I have a fairly good estimate as to how long it will take. But I don't want to say, as that will just turn it into a deadline mentally.

Rest assured that I'll keep you up to date, though. This coming week should be nothing but core work, so hopefully next post I'll be able to report how well things have moved along.