Welcome to my update article for Summer 2026. It is an overview of the work I’ve done, projects I’ve finished, and any other interesting developments during the months of July, August, and September 2026. Let’s see how it went!
The previous update article explained how I really struggle to earn an income from my work. It also explained all the different things I tried and considered, and how the conclusion was still that I was already doing the right things. Launching my online store, the kinds of products I can make for it, it’s all designed to fit me as well as possible, while maximizing the chance of earning money.
And, so, that article basically summed up everything else I could be doing … and how I was not going to do that. Stick to the plan, slowly continue work on the (educational) online store, try and make it work.
However …
Professional Work
The past year or so I’ve consciously tried to enter some of the creative fields in which I work “professionally”. It means I stop self-publishing everything, stop throwing games online for free, and start using the typical “professional” ways to get paid for professional work.
I released books with actual publishers. I released a video game on Steam.
And it showed me that it’s just not going to work.
I have repeatedly talked about how I basically lost my motivation—my ability to enjoy anything at all—when I was forced to go to university. That’s ~12 years ago now. I have tried and tried since then, but I have never actually felt like living or doing anything since that moment. All the books I’ve written have been a fucking nightmare from start to finish, because I had zero motivation or enjoyment from start to finish. The same for my video games, my music recordings, etcetera. That’s why I try to blast through all projects and finish them within two weeks, because that’s how much discipline I can muster.
But now I was “forced” to be professional and work longer on a project. A publisher generally reserves 6-12 months to have you edit your book (multiple times) before release. Steam has loads of rules and restrictions, and you have to pass several rounds of review that prove your game is what it claims to be.
And two things happened.
- The things I made became way better. More polished, more error-free, more professional. I completely understand why these processes exist, because they work. I’ve now seen the difference between my old work and the heavily revised, edited, professionally made work. It’s the difference between something people will pay money for—and something for which they don’t.
- My mental and physical health completely crashed. When you have no will to do anything, and you get no reward or enjoyment out of anything, then working on the same thing and executing someone else’s instructions for months and months is just too much.
After finishing work on my book (sold by a Dutch publisher), I could not do anything for weeks. All the discipline and good habits in the world can’t make up for a soul that feels crushed and drained. Ever since finishing the final edit on that book, I hadn’t written a single thing until this season started. Normally I write one book a month, now I haven’t written in half a year for the first time in forever.
After releasing my Steam game, I could not do anything for weeks. I literally wandered around aimlessly for weeks because my body just wanted to die, but I know that’s not good for you, so I tried to stay active and keep doing … something. In practice, I watched a few episodes from different shows, tried to play video games without success, and otherwise just spend hours doing nothing and sitting alone with my thoughts. I have loads of great game ideas to put on Steam, but now I feel like I never even want to touch a computer ever again.
“Just Keep Trying Things”
The common advice to people with burn-out, or depression, or ADHD, is to “keep doing things”. To “keep doing what you’re doing, one small step at a time”. To not overwork yourself, of course, but also not to fall completely still. And so I did. I did that for 15 years.
But these handful of experiences with putting a professional, paid product into the world showed me that it’s just not going to work as long as I’m still in this state. I’m not going to be able to work on projects for long enough if I don’t get at least a spark of enjoyment back. I’m not going to be able to sustainably do this if I have to recover for a month after each project. Nothing I make will ever be good enough until I’m able to actually enjoy working on it for at least a few months. I’ve seen the proof now of what it takes—and the proof that you can’t earn an income on mediocre rushed projects that you hated working on from the start.
To be clear, this is not about “working too hard”. Those book edits took one or two hours a week at most. When I worked on that Steam game, I gave myself twice the amount of time I thought I needed, and it allowed me to take days off and take lots of breaks. I know how to take care of my physical health, I know how to pace myself (and projects). In all possible ways you could define “working too hard”, I don’t think I did.
It’s about the fact that every single second I have to forcefully convince myself to do anything. I should feel proud or something about releasing a professional video game, I should feel happy that a publisher thought my work was good enough to publish the book, but I don’t. Not even a single bit. Not secretly. I’m not humble or perfectionist, I just don’t fucking care about these things and I haven’t for almost 15 years.
And so, as the summer started, I wondered what to do.
Mind you, I had fallen completely still for 2+ weeks at this point. Released my game, never looked back, never did anything else again. I tried to pick a new idea, I started on some prototypes for like 5 minutes before feeling so sick I couldn’t even stand and move my mouse anymore. I even sent a list of all my ideas to family members so they could pick the ones they liked the most. They narrowed it down to ~10 ideas, but they happened to pick the largest and most difficult ones, so I still couldn’t find the will to start on one of those.
I know myself. I know that, if I keep waiting for a few more weeks, I’ll eventually pick something and start creating again. But now I know that whatever I create will not be professional and will thus not earn an income—unless I torture myself again, which I don’t feel like doing.
Getting Help
The first thing I did was obviously to check in with the hospital. I am confirmed to be on the waiting list for some type of aid now. At the same time, they’ve said they “won’t treat ADHD, only the depression” and summarized my problems as “you lack motivation to do what you simply must do”, which is … meh.
I’ve been very clear about what I think and feel for all those 15 years, and I haven’t met a single person who actually listens and doesn’t make up their own reality in which I’m supposedly lazy or anxious.
How the fuck can you look at someone who’s created over one hundred books, and games, and more, and conclude they are lazy? :p
My general practitioner keeps forgetting this fact too. Every conversation starts with him assuming I lie in bed all day and I should just “move out and get a job”, and then I correct him, and then he’s like “well, erm, we don’t know the cause of your problems, so just learn to live with it”.
Every single time he also assumes that it’s me who stops treatment or doesn’t put any effort into it. Then I correct him by saying it has always been the other person who broke off treatment while I was doing all they asked of me—which he can verify to know I’m speaking the truth—and then he just looks awkward and changes the subject.
Great. Great help.
I just don’t know why people keep doing this. I’m a writer, an engineer of mathematics, and someone who long ago decided they were never going to lie again. I can communicate very clearly, in whatever way is required, and be almost obsessed with making sure I tell the objective truth (without subconscious embellishment or framing or making myself look better).
And people just keep pretending I said the opposite of what I said, and assume their own reality about who I really am and what my problems really are. And then—surprise surprise—they treat me for their own assumed diagnosis and it doesn’t work at all!
It’s honestly a bigger issue. I feel like you need to put on a show, like really convince the hospital/general practitioner how sick you are and how much you are in pain, before they actually take you seriously.
Because I’ve always worked so hard, tried things, took care of my health as much as I could, I’ve just never been taken seriously by anyone. Not even my own parents. After 15 years of saying “every single second at university made me suicidal”, my mother still regularly recommends that I just “go and study something else that I like then”. After 15 years of saying that I don’t get enjoyment out of anything, every therapist still writes in their report that I love to do creative stuff and should just do more of it to be happy. Most of all, everyone just says I “look like a fit young man that exercises enough”, and decides that means there are no issues at all and they won’t look into my case any more.
It’s fucking baffling.
I am 100% certain that if I just gave up long ago, if I actually stayed in bed all day and stopped taking care of my health, if I became grumpy and hostile to everyone, they would have actually taken me seriously and treated me. If I broke down crying all the time and told the doctor I’d commit suicide if they didn’t help me, then they would have actually taken me seriously.
But I won’t put on a show (remember my principle about always being honest and authentic?) and I won’t put myself into even more pain (by stopping exercise and good habits) just to convince a stranger.
So, anyway, I’m on a waiting list and trying to get medication, but it will probably be the same old story of not actually getting help at all.
What Else?
As stated, I don’t believe (anymore) that just working on the next project and the next will actually lead to a sustainable income. I just don’t have the physical and mental health to torture myself through a “professional” project (including all the steps and months I now know that it takes to make one).
I decided that I just had to break entirely with that idea and go do something else.
I’ve tried to become a better and better artist, make more and more projects, for quite a long time now. It’s been endless long days of working hard on the next thing, mostly behind my stand-up desk in my tiny bedroom, with some rare days of going out or doing something else. (Of course I go outside each day to run 5 miles, and I take breaks to eat lunch and read newspapers and stuff, but I still consider that part of the same repetitive daily home routine.)
And I did that because creativity just happens automatically. (So what I do is more like not stopping it, like I had to do all the time while I was in school.) And because it’s the one thing I remember that used to give me enjoyment and purpose long ago. (Before our amazing system of education broke me down completely.)
Maybe I should just get a random job, move somewhere else, become a ranger or something.
Maybe I should invent random reasons to overthrow the repetitive daily programming and forcefully keep myself away from rushing through more creative projects.
Maybe I should, indeed, just give up, stop doing my chores and paying my bills, dismantle my company, moan about how everything hurts, and then I might finally be taken seriously and get some help.
I don’t know what I should change or try, but I’ve lost the conviction that just working hard will lead to anything. Because, as I hopefully explained well enough, writing a book in two weeks while being completely demotivated is just never going to amount to an amazing bestselling book. Or just, you know, a book that’s at least pretty good and sells a few copies. You need more time, more energy, more revisions, more belief in your work to make it “professional” and “successful”. How can I convince others to buy something I made if I can’t even honestly tell them I think it’s worth buying?
Anyway, I wrote most of these thoughts at the start of this season.
Now I’m finishing this article because the end of September is nearing and the “summer season” is almost over.
What did I actually end up doing? What are my thoughts now?
- I just felt completely drained and honestly very sick at the height of summer ( = the hottest days), so I did not really do anything for a month or so. Suddenly I could not even run 5 miles anymore, even though I’ve done it every day for years. I think it was probably a combination of being drained from that “professional work” + climate change and the insane temperatures it’s bringing already = just being sick and unable to breathe.
- Then I spent a month trying to jump onto the Murdoku bandwagon. Trying something new: chasing trends, thinking more commercially. I invented a few completely new puzzles and created a full book for each. I think they’re pretty great and I have started more such books, but I’m not sure which ones I will finish (or when).
- Then I spent a month going back to the webshop anyway and hopping around between projects. Some quizzes, some prompt cards, a new invention I call “classroom games”, starting some educational stories. I basically picked projects so small and self-contained that I could do them in 1 to 3 days. More ambitious projects, even though I am more interested in them and know they’ll be more successful, simply take too long right now for my impatient brain and damaged health.
I also put in a formal request for subsidy/assistence with my local government. It was a lot of work, with lots of steps and talks/communication, and I ended up being rejected. I wasn’t eligible for receiving a small sum of money each month … because my company wasn’t making enough money right now. It’s the classic story of “we’ll help you, but only if you’re basically already successful and we’ll get a return on our investment”. The Dutch government has lots of policies in place that are supposed to help you become a productive member of society—but they design the rules so they only help people who need the help the least. It is another thing that baffles and frustrates me, but at least I tried.
In the same way, I looked around for jobs, for something else to do (or get income from). I even made a resume (CV) for the first time in my life! Alas, I could not find anything that was actually possible for me (physically) or did not make me feel sick just at the thought of being stuck in that job (mentally). The popularity of AI (and social media/algorithms/ads) has particularly damaged the areas in which I work, removing basically all entry level jobs.
And in much the same way, I tried to record music again. Becoming a musician was always my plan as a young boy, it’s clearly where most of my talent lies and the one area I “enjoy” the most. I picked up my habit of doing vocal exercises again and prepared what I could to finally record the 500+ songs on my hard drive. But my voice is just not working. I used to be able to sing really well, but now I can barely talk, and the vocal exercises don’t help as much anymore as they used to. My jaw/throat literally feels like someone is stabbing knives into it half the time, and it feels numb (like when you go to the dentist and they prepare to pull your wisdom teeth) the other half of the time. All the signs point to nerve damage or muscles just not working, and I can’t do much about it.
I tried, but it did not lead anywhere.
Looking Forward
So, what now?
I will be doing the same thing I always do. Get up each day and try to get something done.
- Pick the smallest projects that feel doable. This, in practice, amounts to taking tiny steps to complete the curriculum planned for the online store. A quiz here, a puzzle there, a bundle of (very) short stories about the alphabet, etc.
- And once in a while, when my brain suddenly invents some new idea or decides I have to do something else, do that for a week or so. Like the “murder mystery puzzle books”. Or my sudden Steam game release. Or discovering a musical album I had recorded 4 years ago but forgotten to publish, so let’s do that now.
None of these things will be good or lead to income. I’ve seen that now. But at least I won’t fall still and the store stays active and growing.
And then, if all goes right, I should finally be able to get serious treatment tackling all the issues. Which, of course, hopefully helps me improve my health and my life and future.
Until the next update,
Tiamo
