Spring 2025 Update!

Welcome to my update article for Spring 2025. It is an overview of the work I’ve done, projects I finished, and any other interesting developments during the months of April, May and June 2025. Let’s see how it went!

Where We Left Off

The previous update ended with my explanation that I was going to seek help/treatment. The past ~10 years I’ve been doing all the right things and working really hard, but it just seems impossible for my brain to actually enjoy things or want things. Just as it seems impossible for my body to heal from my chronic illness. And so, as my productivity had plummeted to an all time low, I decided to try the thing I’d sworn off all those years: medication.

Initially, this went well. Because of my proven health history, I would’ve been able to immediately start with that medication. My general practictioner believed it was more urgent to tackle the depression part of my mental state than the hyperactivity, so that was our sole focus. Any “tests” to diagnose me with ADHD, for me example, and possible treatment for that, would come much later.

Buuuut, as is a recurring feature of my life, things went wrong. The medicine he told me to take were forbidden by another doctor because they might mess with my heart. Then he pointed me to a different facility which was too far away from my home, so I requested something nearby, he insisted this was the right place to go, I explained again how my complete lack of energy/motivation made it a tall order to travel that far every week, and so forth and so forth, until I was tired and had no energy left to continue pursuing this treatment. So it’s in limbo right now. I still haven’t received any treatment or even made an appointment, as I tried to change my life in other ways first.

So … I basically continued doing the same things as before this season! With only minor differences!

Well, looking back, there were actually some major differences. But those were unintended.

The Online Store

As explained in the previous update, I’m working towards a large online store. I’ll finally start selling the many works I create, instead of handing them out for free. Because I am 28 years old now and really really need some sort of income :p

For the most part, this store is meant to show the games are the best way to learn. And, to a smaller extent, puzzles/escape rooms/quizzes/activities are the best way to learn. And so I started at the very beginning of the usual school curriculum, and simply started “converting” those topics and skills to games, puzzles, quizzes, and so forth.

We’re currently at “Level 1”, which roughly means ages 3–5. Pre-school and, perhaps, the very start of school.

This season I managed to create …

• Language is 50+% done. (This means word awareness, syllable awareness, etcetera. Learning the letters of the alphabet is “Level 2”, so this is all preparation, working with language the only way 3-year-olds can, through sounds, and gestures, and images.)
• Maths/Logic is 50+% done. (I’ve done recognition/discrimination, colors, shapes, and started with grouping/comparing. Early numbers and counting are the final bit, but so important that I know it will be a larger batch of work.)
• Easter (Level 1/2/3): a whole bunch of Easter-related games, products, puzzles, and so forth. (100% done, although I have some more ideas I might make next year. As expected, I made these around Easter, and tested a few on the day itself.)

The past few years I’ve had a habit of switching between my two (terrible) computers. One week I’d work on my laptop (which contains the website code and all my writing), the other week I’d work on my drawing tablet (which allows doing illustration and all the graphics, but has nothing else). I’d ping-pong back and forth, because I need both to finish any project.

This time, however, I got stuck on my tablet for an entire month. Twice.

Why did I get stuck on one device? Because every idea I had became many ideas, much larger and more ambitious than before.

This is most apparent when looking at the things I did for the topic of “basic shapes”. Yes, I made some nice educational material that explains what squares and circles are, and allows you to draw and recognize them. That was the easy part! Regurgitating explanatory text, and asking some homework questions (without even giving answers), is incredibly easy. I don’t understand why textbooks are so expensive. Anybody can do this. But actually putting that knowledge into a more clever and fun format (game/puzzle/escape room/etc), and needing to provide the answers too, that is much harder.

When I started thinking about games for 3-year olds, playing with shapes, I was stuck at first. And then, after exercise and a good night’s sleep, I suddenly had a list of 20 promising ideas. I made as many as I could—the “best ones”—but still had to leave a lot behind. There are just too many ways to use basic shapes and already get interesting, educational, fun (board) games.

What should have been a single week of work became an entire month. A month filled, mostly, with making even more Shape and Color games/puzzles. I had to cut it off at some point to get back some variety in my work and not fall behind on the vague general planning!

In fact, I’m writing this because I’m procrastinating on my actual work: putting all these products onto the store. I made a list this morning of everything I had made, which now needs to be uploaded to my shop (for people to buy) and receive a nice description + image on the website (for people to actually, you know, be able to find it). And the list is so long that I felt deflated and took a break.

Lesson learned: next time, take this final step sooner, preferably the same week as when I finished the product in question.

In any case, I made a lot of progress. Not as much as I had planned or hoped for. I’m digressing a lot and sticking with the same topic too long. Of those 33 products, only 7 were planned when I switched to my tablet. But at least the store is slowly starting to look like a professional venture that offers whatever you need.

It will surely not launch this Summer, though. I could only do ~50% of Level 1 in about half a year. This means I need half a year for the other 50%, so the new launch date for the online store is January 2026.

In making these products, I also discovered many issues with the current website design, and many practical features to add. When I finally returned to my laptop, I also had a long list of such fixes, but those are much easier (“add these two lines of code here, should fix that issue”) and so I did most of them already.

Anything Else?

Nope. Usually, I can report writing some more books, or creating more Pandaqi games, or my never-ending idea to record music again countered by the never-ending disastrous renovation here that makes it impossible.

But I am really committed to that online store. To some extent, it has to be a success, as I need an income. I need to buy a proper computer, a proper space to live in, anything that could aid my declining health, and so forth. I’ve burned through my reserves. I’m too old now to stay with my parents any longer or spend another year trying some other experimental venture, and as I’ve also explained numerous times, my chronic illness is no joke and I don’t know for how much longer I can work and exercise and live somewhat freely.

And so, for the past three months, I pushed away all other projects and created the highest-quality (educational) products I could make. And I made a lot.

I also learned a lot. These products get better and better every time. Sometimes I even surprise myself with how easily I can invent and fully create a functional board game around a specific topic. I’m also settling on a general “style guide”, dictating the fonts/colors/look used by default. (When needed, products can deviate from it, but they all start out with this “standardized” look.)

This was always the plan, though. I had “worked ahead” for about a year. I am still releasing my books and games on their regular schedule, because all of those were finished last year and already in the pipeline. But if I keep 99% of my attention on the webshop until the end of this year, I’ll have burned through those reserves too. And I don’t like that. So I’ll probably need to put some serious hours into Saga of Life and Wildebyte Arcades next season.

And I planned a massive overhaul of Pandaqi anyway. The online store will become the place with my newest, best, and paid games once it has launched. This means Pandaqi should be simplified and become a sort of “marketing tool” with free games. It’s not my main website anymore. And even if it were, I can see now how my old design was a bit too “busy”, perhaps childish, and needlessly complicated behind the scenes, so I want to just … standardize that too, I guess. You’ll understand when you see it.

No, instead of working even more, I try to not work on purpose since the start of this season :p Which, in effect, means that I work on the webshop for several hours each day, and then don’t work on anything in the remaining hours. Yes, this is very new to me. And yes, of course, if you suddenly work 4 hours less every day, you’re going to be far less productive and many projects are on hold.

What does that “not-work” look like? First I try to exercise. But this depends on the weather, how I’m feeling, if I can find someone else to exercise with. Then I’ll try a video game. As stated, though, I don’t really enjoy anything, so most video games feel more like homework and a waste of time to me. Over time, “game time” has come down to a single video game that still interests me and nothing else. I can only play that game on our shared computer, too, which is often occupied.

So, in most cases, we fall back on the third option for “not-work”. Which is to finally catch up to the long list of movies and TV shows (and books) that have been recommended to me over the years. Expect some more reviews of random things on this blog the rest of this year.

I’m not sure what to think about this change, though.

I don’t know where I would have been if I hadn’t done this (i.e. purposely planned a few hours of relaxation every day), so I don’t know if it’s an improvement. Every time I take the rest of the night off, I still don’t enjoy the supposedly enjoyable entertaining thing I’m doing, and just feel bad that I’m falling behind on my projects.

At the same time, I must admit that I am more rested and more able to sustain healthy habits. I don’t need to sleep for as long as before—which could easily mean sleeping 10 hours every night. Because I don’t continue working in the evenings, I have suddenly stopped eating in the evenings too (to get the energy and motivation for it, I guess), creating a healthier diet. Even when I feel resentment towards what I’m doing, that complete lack of motivation or reward for all the effort I put in, I am still able to get up and put in a few hours of work. Probably because I am well-rested and already “relaxed” yesterday by gaming for a few hours.

And in the end, putting in 3–4 hours every day will get you much further than putting in 10 hours one day and then being too tired to be productive the rest of the week.

Conclusion

Next season, I hope to take a small summer break. With the extra rest and time, I hope to find the energy to actually pursue treatment again. It probably goes without saying, but I still want to mention how incredibly difficult it is to live (or do anything) if absolutely nothing interests you or makes you feel happy/content/rewarded. Combine it with a body that’s been disintegrating since I was 11 years old, and I just don’t think I can handle all that without some (perhaps medicinal) help anymore.

I also hope to take that time to buy a new computer. Again. Because all previous attempts went wrong in unfortunate ways—because of course they did, it’s me we’re talking about—and now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t just go to a physical store, test if the computer works as intended (100%), and then take that specific computer home! If I have to go through the process of returning an expensive computer and getting all my money back one more time …

The rest of my time will be spent creating even more (educational) products for my online store. And transfering older work of mine to it, which is a boring job that has to be done at some point. My “Level 1”-outline above basically tells you what still needs to happen. There are just a few extra elements (such as the “Social” aspect of the curriculum, e.g. teaching kids to cooperate or express emotion) that I’ll try to add, but they’re less important to me, because board games already include that social aspect.

It’s … well, I don’t want to repeat myself too much. It’s a lot of work. I don’t like any part of the work and feel no joy from finishing anything. But I have to remind myself that it’s not because it’s a bad idea or I’m making bad things—but that this is simply my state of being with regard to everything. And if I’m going to be working hard without reward, then let it be on something that’s actually useful and practical and has value. I truly believe the world would be better if the entire system of education was abolished, and I truly believe it can easily be replaced with (mostly) board games. So I’m on a mission to show everyone what that means and how right I am.

In my mind, this can go one of two ways. Either I launch the webshop and nothing happens, or it’s a slam-dunk success. Nothing in between. Either nobody finds the website, nobody deems my work worthy of paying for it, and I can’t cover its costs after about a year. Or people treat my store like they seem to treat the other places that sell educational material online, and these products will be used, loved, and paid for.

There aren’t that many places like this. Surely none of them sell the things I’m making. (The idea of “board games as a curriculum” is certainly new to many.) And many of such “educational stores”, I’m sorry to say, sell hideous low-quality products for high prices, and people are buying that and liking it!?

And that’s why I believe that if the online store manages to be found, it will be my ticket to a stable income. I’m making good stuff, because I have the experience and the drive to tear down schooling systems worldwide. I have really good stuff planned once I get to Level 2. Experiences, games, ideas that have never been done in education before, but feel like the best next step to me. I am tempted to work ahead whenever I get one of those “great ideas for the future”, but I try to stay disciplined and do things in a sensible order.

We’ll need to wait another 6 months to find out which of the two possible futures will come true.

Until next time,

Tiamo