My app journey: 5 months later
- Posted on: June 1, 2025
... nothing
I hate ADHD brain sometimes. Regardless of what you think of that comment, I urge you to keep reading.
I did NOTHING. That's what it feels like. I have no app to show for it. I've not really been keeping up with Swift that I can say "I haven't build anything, but I now know how to do it". Nope. Nothing like that. I'll highlight the ADHD alerts like this: 💥.
Instead I worked and I was gearing up for my company's self-development budget to come through in February so I could buy a Swift course to help me start out. Then February came along and I was fired instead 💥. In 3 months the company was going under and we all had to scramble to find a new position in a shitty economy. Two months later, I did. I've exhausted myself in the process, but I did it. There were compromises, but I did it! And I felt paralysed 💥. I was then persuaded to go visit family and that was very rewarding 💥, though not always relaxing. Anyway... Then the new job kicked in 💥 and did I mention I don't know the programming language for this new job? Yeah... so impostor syndrome is already dialled at 100%. And still I remained determined to not let my side projects die. Only I also had to find the time to get good at the actual thing paying my salary. So I started to share my private time between learning Kotlin for work and Swif... oh no. DevonThink is now a subscription I can't afford, shit. I gotta find an alternative 💥. But I also need to not fall on this trap again, so can I just self-host my stuff? Oh, I can? NextCloud, huh? Interesting, how does this work? 💥
Cool, but then let's host it on the old PC. Gotta change the operating system to Debian 💥 but that's a PITA to maintain. Though apparently a thing called YunoHost exists 💥 and I can use that instead. So I’ll install that but I then got distracted and screwed it up 💥 so I had to look up what I did wrong and reinstall it. Then I looked around on how to set up NextCloud which appears to be super easy… OH MY GOD they have forgejo too! I should totally move my instance here 💥. So I get my RaspberryPi and backup my instance only halfway through I’m like: this isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing. But if I stop now, I’m not finishing yet another thing and if I finish this thing it might help me with the other thing so I’MMA FINISH THIS FORGEJO MIGRATION OKAY?! And then I DO! Was it crucial for me to learn what I needed to install NextCloud? Well… no, that was a dumb ADHD-brain excuse but, I mean… it didn’t hurt. And NexCloud actually uses CalDAV, so maybe I can integrate it with Reminders 💥? Oh! I know! I can use this protocol in my own app…. shit. MY OWN APP!!! That’s what I was supposed to be doing! Not all of this.
Oh no. I’ve done nothing. NOTHING! Oh God. This is awful. What do I have to show for it? I mean… I did do stuff. I do have things to show for it. I built cool things! I learned stuff that wasn’t even on radar. And I finished them! Also what I built can now be used as a solid (frankly, more privacy-friendly) base for my personal app. THIS IS AWESOME! And if I didn’t have that ADHD, I wouldn’t have done all of those cool things. That’s a comfort in days when I feel awful about what I didn’t achieve. Is this lame and cliché but when you’re beating yourself up for all the things you didn’t do, it’s important to look at the unplanned victories too. And those are victories. I don’t always get them when I ADHD out. But in this case, I did. And I bet I’m not the only one that forgets to appreciate that. So please [my brain], remember to celebrate those victories when they come. The unexpected ones are often the coolest.
Now let’s try to go back to my app.