A quick update

Firstly, let’s congratulate one another on making it through 1/12 of this year. It’s been a struggle to keep my head up in the last two years, and it may also be the case for others, so I consider making it through one month without sinking into depression or getting burned out—and amid yet another COVID surge at that—quite an accomplishment. We’re almost two years into the pandemic, yet in my opinion not much attention has been paid to the “shadow pandemic” of depression and anxiety that has afflicted me, my loved ones, and countless other people. I’m recovering, thankfully, and I’ve shifted my focus from managing the stress to embracing the “new normal” as the COVID situation eases once more; I hopefully it’ll last this time.

Secondly, an update to Makiroll is coming next month. It’s not going to be a big one, just an interim release with a substantial look-and-feel revamp and some performance improvements to give the site its own identity while version 1.0 takes shape. I was aiming to launch the update later this month and the new version is almost ready for testing, but I decided to cut myself some slack and push the launch date to March 5th. It’s not yet the grand-launch-worthy Makiroll I’ve been aiming for, but I'm getting there.

Thirdly, I’m making a slight change to my approach to writing on Makiroll. My original plan was to publish one long-form post every two weeks to allow enough time for research, writing, artwork (whenever applicable), and revision, but I’ve never been able to stick to the schedule because of time constraints (this is just a pastime, after all) and the occasional writer’s block. I still have a handful of topics in the pipeline, but while I try to find time this month to get one off the presses, I’ll publish shorter posts like this one from time to time to keep the site current. My plan is to morph Makiroll into a news feed with different types of content, much like you’d see on Facebook, but that won’t happen until version 1.0 arrives later this year. In the meantime, excuse my ramblings as you might see more of them here.

As always, thanks for stopping by, and stay awesome.