update

To all my friends/mutuals here and elsewhere, I feel like I owe you all a life update and a small apology.

To make a long story short, my job has been taking nearly all my energy lately. I work in software development, and between the AI craze doubling expectations for productivity, a rush to add AI integration into the product I work on, and general trends in the field of massive job cuts and layoffs, it's been a real rough time setting proper boundaries between work life and personal life while still holding on to some semblance of job security. Not only have pressures on performance been high, but I've been facing the real threat of the loss of my current job also locking me out of the software development field entirely due to hardly anybody hiring software developers anymore. Without the proper boundaries I've become trapped into a loop where the pressures make me want to just put more hours in and work harder, but doing so just worsens the problem of me drifting further away from friends and communities that I love and enjoy being with that I've felt helpless to stop. In all it feels like I've drifted backwards in personal development and growth this year, and have drifted away from many wonderful friends and groups that have been a huge positive influence in my life. So if you've noticed me fading into the background or talking to you less, I promise it's not due to anything you did, it's due to my own struggles with setting work boundaries and I really do still value our friendship.

I say all of this not to make excuses for myself, but to give some background behind what I want to do about it and give myself some accountability by sharing my goals. I'm working on setting better work boundaries so I can give myself the time and energy to get back to where I was. I want to get back into spending time in VR with friends and communities that I'm a part of, participating in events more, and overall just being more present. I'm also working on regaining skills I feel like I've lost through atrophy on just being a good friend, checking in, and genuinely caring. I can't promise a time when I'll get back to where I was, but just know I'm committed to getting there. I appreciate all my friends so much and want to be better.