"So where the bloody hell are you?"

[ZZ-Cat]

I'm back!

TL;DR:

• Burnout is a b!tch!
• So is complex PTSD, and so is rheumatoid arthrits - two ongoing conditions that adversely affect my mental health and my physical health, respectively. By extension, impacts my ability to write code.
• The XZ Utils incident gave me quite the scare, because I am in a similar situation to the maintainer of that project.
• I'm setting boundaries with myself to minimise the impact of 👆 that lot up there.
• Downtime is not a waste of time.
• Development of CRSF for Arduino may slow down while I take time off to look after myself. This is necessary, because I would be unable to provide you with a high quality code otherwise.
• The project is not going anywhere. It's still active.

So where have I been?
Well, for a start, I let my intrusive thoughts win by not telling you guys about going on a hiatus for nearly three months, 'cause my intrusive thoughts at the time were like "You don't need to make an announcement for this. Nobody reads them anyway..."
Only for you guys, the wholesome lot you are, be like "we haven't seen an update in a while, what's going on?" etc - Pretty much reminding me why I do these types of announcements in the first place, and reminding me that y'all are way more supportive than what my own mind tries to convince me of.

Okay! So. I needed time off. Like... time off of literally everything, including flying my drones and working on CRSF for Arduino.
In the wake of the XZ Utils incident, I got into a really bad place with my mental health. Not gonna lie, the XZ Utils backdoor incident gave me one helluva scare.... because I'm in a similar situation to them - solo developer what's continuously burned out by their own project and the significance their project holds.

It wasn't only XZ Utils, by the way. But, that was the biggest contributor to me being like "Okay. I require time off, to recuperate, because I cannot function like this and produce anything of good quality."
The full context of this is realising how popular CRSF for Arduino is becoming, having my first bona-fide manufacturer chime in and do feature requests as well as sending me prototype hardware I can test CRSF for Arduino on, a small number of people begging for the next update (really, guys? Come on. I have it in my contribution guidelines to not do that, because it has literally this effect on me). There's also me bogging myself down with minutiae related to CRSF for Arduino - particularly to do with the Serial Transmitter Interface; falling back into some old habits I unlearned (such as letting CRSF for Arduino take over my life, thus causing my quality of life to suffer for it)... only for me to claw my way back out of them... barely... then, what finished me off was XZ Utils' backdoor incident and my reaction to it... which resulted in me bringing in the CodeQL that y'alll are seeing now.

Over the last two months, I have had plenty of time to think everything through, and here is my approach to CRSF for Arduino moving forward:

1. I'm setting boundaries for myself. EG I'm only coding in the mornings, but only when I am fully able to do it.
   I need to remember that I have my absolute limitations, of which are both related to my physical health as well as my mental health. I regularly have days where my mind is a complete asshole to me (pardon the language, but that's the only way I can describe my experiences with complex PTSD), and I have days where I'm in too much physical pain to do anything, let alone code... as a result of my rheumatoid arthritis.
   But, I do what I can, when I can. So far, CRSF for Arduino is testament to that.
   But, please understand that if it seems like I have not made any commits, merged any pull request, and/or made any new releases over a significant amount of time, this is what's going on in the background.
2. Going "above and beyond" is detrimental to me in the sense that it lends itself to people-pleasing behaviour.
   Therefore, I'm sticking with what I initially started CRSF for Arduino with: You ask for it, you get it, but only if it can benefit the project as a whole and the community of users, not just yourself.
   That was what worked, and I had no reason to change that in the month leading up to me going on my hiatus.
3. Reminding myself that it's okay to slow down, take breaks, and not hyper-fixate.

I highlighted "take breaks" there, because not only does this mean stepping out and taking time for myself and to clear my head (so I can later on, come back to this and fully focus on it), it's a reminder that downtime is not a waste of time.
In fact, downtime - especially in my case - is necessary to help clear my mind of noise, intrusive thoughts, the "what if" scenarios, and overall... a need to decompress.

Ultimately, what this means is sometimes development on CRSF for Arduino will slow down. It won't stop completely, until I say so. If I do say so, you guys will get plenty of notice. No, seriously. When I discontinue a project, I give about three months' notice prominently placed in the README file and I provide a valid reason as to why the project is being discontinued.
But, when I need downtime, understand that the reason for it is equivalent to my hands being injured and I'm unable to work to my full capacity that you guys have come to know with me, and I need time off to rest, recover, and recuperate in my own way.
I do try my best to let you know when I do go on hiatus... sometimes I get in my own head and let the intrusive thoughts win (like this last time, for example)... other times, I may simply forget. I am human, after all.

Additionally...
There is no need for me to be going balls-to-the-wall and writing commit after commit at break-neck speeds and doing new releases every three months. While this may seem like it's an admirable thing to do, in reality... it isn't. Because what's the catch? What is this at the expense of? That expense is me and my overall quality of life, because I let my project consume my life.
I'm an independent developer with my own rules, boundaries, guidelines, goals, and limitations. I'm not Betaflight; I'm not ArduPilot; and I'm definitely not the EdgeTX crew (as awesome as they are).
At the end of the day, I'm me. I am only one person, not an organisation with a team of developers (if this is what you thought I was... that's not what I am. Sorry, not sorry). There is only so much I can do, and there is only 24 hours in a day. My work day, at best, is between two and four hours, because I can only tolerate that on account of how taxing coding is on my mind. Any longer than that and it results in me burning myself out very quickly, which means I need to take more hiatuses off of my projects to recover from that burnout.... only to repeat that cycle of burning myself out again.

I'm not stepping down, I'm not stopping, the project is still active. I am simply letting y'all know that I need to take time off to look after myself, so that when I come back, I can deliver you guys a high quality and robust library that y'all can use in your projects. 'Cause when I'm burned out, there is no way I can reliably do that.

...and above all... thank you all for being here, and being the wonderful lot that you are, and helping me turn what was originally created out of spite, into what it is today. =^/.^=