Welcome to my update article for Winter 2026. It is an overview of the work I’ve done, projects I finished, and any other interesting developments during the months of January, February, and March 2026. Let’s see how it went!
Where We Left Off
In the previous update, I explained that …
- I was busy with an online store set to launch in January 2026.
- I set some simple resolutions for the next year, mostly about making sure I don’t fall into bad/worse habits and making sure I take time to do not-online-store-things :p
The Online Store
Well, the good news is that I kept my promise/deadline on the first part and launched that online store!
It’s live now. It’s official. It’s approved in all the places it had to be approved. You can actually buy things and I will earn money from that.
Is it “done”? “Perfect”? A “big success”? No, of course not. I explained in previous updates how I’d hoped to get more done, but had to settle for picking my battles. I launched with a “good chunk” of Level 1 done. This year I want to finish Level 1 and get started with Level 2 products. I launched with a website that looks quite nice and has the necessary features, but I certainly have a file with some wishes and some doubts behind the scenes.
I did the basic “marketing” for this store by permanently linking it and mentioning it whenever relevant on all my other websites. But that’s obviously the bare minimum. For example, Google also recognizes that as just linking between a handful of your own websites and doesn’t put much stock into that.
Before launch, I made a list of ideas for promoting it and making sure people can find it. For example, give away products in the relevant subreddits, mention the store and its vision in places where teachers are, put more work into hitting all the right keywords on my best products.
I … can’t say I struck many items off that list. There’s so much to do and to focus on when launching this thing that I just didn’t find the time yet. I know it’s important. Without this marketing, despite how much quality my store offers, very few have been able to find it. The fact I have a list of specific “promotion activities” at all is great progress compared to years ago, I’ll just need to make it a habit this year of following through.
Instead of marketing the store, I’ve been making more things for it! The first three months of the year don’t have many holidays or special themes going on, which is good, because it allowed me to focus on the curriculum/educational stuff again. I’d basically ignored that for two months at the end of 2025 as I made stuff for Christmas, Halloween, etcetera. Slowly but surely, I chipped away at the worksheets and teacher materials left for the final Level 1 topics.
It’s a bit boring, though, I must admit. I only create these “traditional” educational materials in hopes of attracting people to the store and earning a baseline income. The actual value of my work comes from educational games, puzzles, stories, etcetera. Basically all the more “advanced” things I make after getting the lesson materials over with.
But I try to find a balance. I try to power through some boring days and then “reward” myself by finally being able to make an actually fun and effective way to explore a topic or skill.
This way, most of the Level 1 stuff is done, and I managed to slip in a good number of those advanced products. For example, the quantity of “educational games” is much healthier now than it was at launch :p It sure felt a bit silly that I started an online store to show how everything could be taught through games … and only had like 6 games.
There’s not much else to say. Lots of work done, lots of work still to do. I wanted to link to some noteworthy products here (to show what I’m talking about), but I didn’t know what to choose.
So I’ll just say that, at time of writing, I just finished T-Rex Tells. I’m also nearly done with Fruity Finish and I finally completed the story bundle called The Matching Myths. That one was hard. It required a lot of images, which I wanted to draw myself, but my hardware makes it impossible, so I eventually had to use AI images and tell myself “I’ll do it properly in the future”. It was one of those moments where I really have to tell myself “just make it exist, don’t make it perfect, just get it done and move on for now”.
Anyway, I’ll probably give more (financial/visior) statistics on the store in the next update, when I actually have more data to report.
The Not-Online-Store
Look, it’s getting harder and harder. The online store was specifically set up to allow displaying and selling all the things I do. To make it easy and simple for me to do so. Every little thing that interests me, every kind of skill I ever tried to do, has a nice little predefined place on that store.
So … everything I do now starts to appear on the store!
Even tiny ideas I’d have put on Pandaqi for free before, or maybe written into a free Saga of Life story, are now subtly (almost subconsciously) repurposed to be sold on the store.
On the one hand, I’m tempted to say “No, stop that!” To tell myself: “Keep doing tiny projects that are NOT sold on the store, keep separate side projects!”
On the other hand, I’ve seen this past year how much the quality and speed of my work improves by putting it on the store. By knowing I have a place for it, a deadline, a price tag, I’ve found it easier to work on it for longer and make things to a higher standard. Probably because my brain thinks it has to be good enough to be sold for money. It has to be good enough that nobody gets mad at me for paying that money and being disappointed. And, thus, the things I made for the store are all higher quality and more refined.
For example, I recently hosted a special kind of party at home with the family. We played “Wie is de Mol?” at home, which is a very popular TV program in the Netherlands. It was just for fun, it was obviously free, and I just worked for a few days to create that special experience (for New Year’s Eve). Nothing special. Nothing for-profit. Just putting effort into a family activity.
But when it was over, I discovered “Wait a minute, people are selling this kind of work?” There are tons of online stores selling “murder mystery packs”, or packs inspired by popular tv programs, recreating that with family/friends at home. The work I just did for that family activity is something other people are actually selling online. Successfully. For quite a bit of money. And I hope I don’t sound like a jerk now, but the quality of their work is quite a bit lower than what I just made. (Those people are just doing this on the side, while I’ve been a professional game designer and visual designer for years. There’s a difference :p)
And so you start wondering. Should I sell this? Should I turn something free and family-oriented into another thing “for profit”? If I did, I know I could earn enough money to sustain the store and I would make much BETTER stuff because it has to earn its price tag. But then it stops being this special, free, do-it-for-love thing, right? If I do that, then … even special family moments become just another playtest for things I want to sell.
Yes, I’m still figuring this out. For now, most ideas and projects of mine can easily be put on the online store. That’s just the best place for them now, that’s just smart and doesn’t hurt anyone. It’s hard not to make everything about money when you have none and you’re currently freezing your ass off in a home without heating.
But I’m trying to hold off on some things, trying to keep a few “not-online-store” or “not-for-sale” hobbies in my life. I’ll let you know how that went in the future :p
Broken Record
Ugh, I feel like a broken record. I keep saying I want to record all those great song ideas of mine, every darn update, yet I never find the space, time, or health for it. And the folder with song ideas only grows! I’m not exaggerating when I say there’s probably 500 ideas for songs in there, of which I’d say 200 are pretty good, and 100 are really good and complete enough to record right now.
But … well, until I record them, nobody else hears them. And I don’t know if I’m mad and it’s actually all terrible, or if I’m right!
Almost every day, I play the piano (or guitar), and I have so many songs now that I’m just 100% playing my own stuff. And people keep asking me what song I just played, saying it’s gorgeous. And then they’re very disappointed when it’s not a real song they can listen to right now—because it’s just a song of mine, in my head :p
What I’m saying is that I have a lot of musical ideas and a lot of social proof that they’re very good. I just need to find a way to consistently record and publish them. I think having the store running and earning a stable income would help a lot here. It would allow me to work on music without worrying about money for a bit, and allow buying some crucial equipment.
I have a decent microphone and all now. But I lack the most important thing: acoustic treatment. There are no rooms in our house where I don’t get an awful sound from the microphone because of the room echo / sound waves interactions.
I created a little “recording cave” with blankets/matresses myself years ago and it made a MASSIVE difference in sound quality. It saved 10+ hours of work on each album, while making each take actually usable. But I can’t do that anymore because that old room of mine is gone, even those blankets and matresses are gone, and I’m not allowed to do it anywhere else.
Anyway, it’s not helpful when every recording sounds unusable and unprofessional because of a terrible acoustic space. This is not in my head, I’m pretty sure, there is a massive audible difference here. You can’t just place your microphone anywhere in a small, boxy, untreated bedroom and expect it to sound fine.
Anything Else?
I’ve mentioned for years now how I struggle to find joy in anything, and as a consequence struggle to find motivation (or “care”) for anything at all. And when I say anything, I mean anything. Our amazing system of education basically sucked the will to life out of me, and ever since getting my degree (~5 years ago) I’ve been trying to undo that damage.
I also mentioned in the last update that I did not expect many changes in this journey. I’ve tried a lot, none of it worked. The only thing left was medication, which I opposed heavily for years. And I think that was mostly the right thing to do, because a lot of things can be improved—and sustainably so—by improving your lifestyle and habits. This made me exercise enough, eat healthier, completely get off social media and my phone, and all sorts of good things.
But it’s not enough.
I’m not a teenager anymore. I don’t have the time or boundless energy to run around and exercise for 5 hours a day, which I used to do for years. Exercise is often touted as the best way to “treat” ADHD or depressive symptoms, as it makes you feel better and more confident that you can take on the world, which in turn leads to motivation and getting stuff done.
As such, my exercise has been reduced to “only” running 5 kilometers every morning, my usual exercises (push-ups, stretching, etc), and sometimes cycling on my desk bike while working in the evening. This is much less than before—and it hurts. The chronic illness becomes worse, my ADHD returns in full force and makes it physically impossible to focus on anything or hold a single thought at all, and worst of all I can’t eat whatever I want anymore because I’ll get fat ;)
Needless to say, this can quickly spiral into loss of productivity and good habits, and eventually everything becoming too hard and coming to a standstill. I noticed the signs and also noticed that I’m just not able to combat it myself anymore. After spiraling a bit further still, I eventually sought help again. There’s a waiting list, of course, but I am set to get mental therapy on a deeper level than before (hoping to find a way to solve the lack of joy I’ve had for 15 years now), and to actually try medication.
I did everything I could to improve my lifestyle. I literally designed my work and my webshop around the strengths of my brain and body, knowing I’ll never be able to hold a usual job or, you know, change my genetics. I did all I could, it has not been enough so far, so I’ve finally decided to stop opposing medication and opposing looking for financial aid.
Reading stories online, and then hearing stories from people around me, has shown me that this is basically the journey of everyone with ADHD. Our brain is a busy mess, we can’t focus on anything the world says we need to focus on, we’re always tired because we’re always busy … and we’ve learned, all our life, to try and fix it. We wonder why everyone else can make decisions and we can’t. We wonder why everyone else knows what they want in life, then does it, and has a stable income by the age of 25. And we think it’s our fault somehow, for not being able to focus and achieve and stick to a lane, which is why we don’t often seek help or think about medication.
And then, the stories all say, they tried medication and broke down crying. Because they suddenly realized what it was like to actually finish thoughts. To actually have a single calm voice in your head and being able to finish a task you started. They suddenly understood why everyone else got shit done and could decide what to focus or work on—and why they never could because of literally their brain’s core programming.
As for financial aid, I likely won’t get it. But I have to try. I’m almost 30 now and always stressed about not actually earning a stable income. Stressed about not being able to do anything because I am poor, and not being able to actually start living until I’m already old.
Of course, I don’t know how everything will play out. But I have to cling onto some sliver of hope that medication will get me over that first and biggest hurdle. Enable me to either work a job or focus long enough on projects to finish them, market them, and find success in that. Because after 15+ years I’ve realized I will likely never earn money as long as my brain loses interest in a project/job after two days. That’s just not enough time and focus to truly polish and market anything. To truly iterate and make it good enough to sell. To actually be known for something and consistently deliver that.
And yes, that’s how bad it is for hyperactive people. I can literally wake up and believe—deep in my core, with all my heart—that “today I want to learn how to make an online multiplayer game! I must do that! Let’s focus on that!” And I will work tirelessly for three days, gaining this incredibly complicated skill, and then …
… I wake up the next day with absolute complete disinterest in games at all. Just don’t care. It’s in the past now. I’ve moved on and all the discipline in the world can’t bring me back to actually finish that game. My brain has found some new thing to focus on, or it tries to think about a hundred things at once, and so it goes. So it has always gone for nearly 30 years.
So yes, in short, I am enrolled to start a course of treatment that can hopefully achieve two things. Allow my brain to calm down so I can hold a job or finish projects (properly), leading to income and productivity and career, leading to stability and less stress and being able to … do stuff. And, at the same time, give me the feeling again that any of this matters and that I should expand my horizons beyond me working alone in my room. Or, at least, figure out how the heck I’m this contradictory person that is both completely disinterested in life and simultaneously the most fit and hard-working person you’ll meet.
Conclusion
Let’s end the update more positively, as I always try to do.
Despite all these issues I got some things done the past three months. Not enough, not as much as I wanted, but some things. At the very least, I learned how to make online multiplayer games ;)
It will take a while for treatment to start. Until then, all I can do is keep getting up each day and trying to do stuff at a pace I can manage. I’ll probably finish some more things for the online store, go off on tangents half the time, and make a a half-hearted attempt to earn money from any of it.
I still know, rationally, that the online store is the best project for me. My plan for it is very solid, it fits how I think and work, it has endless potential for growth and new products, and it actually sells things instead of giving them away for free (as I did for years). I already did the hardest part and just need to grow and market it. It’s just near impossible to convince my easily distracted brain to also know this and be motivated to keep working on it. But who knows, maybe next month I’ll suddenly truly believe this again and get lots of stuff done.
Then again, as mentioned, I don’t want to be “more productive” or “working even more”. I want to actually live a life, meet someone, be able to truly relax or play for the first time since forever. But unless I find some magical pot of gold, the route towards that freedom (and being able to take time off) is through earning money, so that’s still the first priority.
Until next update,
Tiamo