Surgeries, six months at Luma, and getting back to Prism

The last few months have been a lot.

My son started 8th grade this fall, which brought its own flavor of chaos. On top of that, most of my time and energy has gone to caretaking and keeping the house running while my wife, Clarity, has been going through surgery after surgery. So I wanted to take a minute and catch you all up.

Clarity’s surgeries

On August 21st Clarity had a double mastectomy. It was preventive, but the pathology showed she was likely pre-cancerous. So… we’re really glad she did it when she did.

The surgery went well. Recovery was pretty rough.

An infection caused some healing issues, so on October 21st she went back in for surgery. The expander would likely need to be replaced, but we didn’t know for sure going in. It did end up getting replaced, and the surgery turned out to be more extensive than we expected, so the recovery was rougher than we’d planned on too.

Then on November 4th she had another surgery for more healing issues. This time they removed the expander completely while she heals, which means there’s at least one more surgery ahead to put an expander back in.

The good news? She’s doing really well with this one. No pain. She’s mostly just feeling the fatigue from the infection.

Three surgeries in three months has been brutal. Hardest on Clarity, obviously, but it’s been hard on all of us. I’m super grateful this recovery has been smoother. We’re all still pretty worn down from this year though.

I’m doing my best to keep everything else running so she can focus on getting better.

Six months at Luma

I just passed the six month mark at Luma and I’m blown away by how fast that went.

I’m really proud of the work I’m doing there and the impact I’m having. I love the people I work with. And we’ve got some big things in the works that I’m SO stoked about.

Prism

I’m working my way back to Prism, and I’ve published two releases since I last wrote.

The first, v0.101.0, was a big batch of catch up, and it happened thanks to Wishborn. They maintained a fork where we merged a bunch of PRs, resolved issues, and extended features. Huge thanks for keeping things moving while I couldn’t!

The second, v0.102.0, got Prism updated to work with the latest OpenAI and Anthropic models.

Caregiving has kept me from moving as fast as I’d like, but I’ve got a roadmap and a game plan to keep at it: getting more PRs merged, issues resolved, and new features out the door.

Sonari and Halcyon

Sonari and Halcyon have taken a back seat, but I really want to get back to them.

Sonari is in a really good spot. The app has been working great, it just needs licensing and the in-app updates finished. I’m planning on using Polar for the licensing side. I just need a little time to wrap it up.

If you haven’t seen Halcyon yet, it’s a markdown notes app for macOS. You point it at a folder and every note is a plain .md file, so you can edit them with whatever you want (Neovim included) while Halcyon is open. It has real vim bindings too. It’s still in development, and there’s an iPhone companion app in progress.

Making time for me

I’m trying to carve out some time for myself and get back to the things that are important to me and feed my passions.

I submitted a talk to PHPTek 2027. I’m planning on attending Laracon US. And I’ll be applying to speak at Laracon AU… I’m crossing my fingers super hard on that one.

I’ve also been trying to engage more on socials. I’m not where I’d like to be, but I’m trying not to be as isolated. I think dev-null.sh is great, and lately I find myself checking it more than anything else.

My mental health is the most stable it’s been in a long time. There are still some bumps in the road and I’m still doing the hard work in therapy, but it’s a much smoother ride.

And with whatever downtime I can find, I’ve been playing Diablo 4. Season 15 has been one of the best seasons so far. (I started playing late in season 4 and have skipped a season or two along the way.)

Things are still messy over here, and there’s at least one more surgery ahead of us. But honestly, I’m in a much better place than I’ve been, and I’m excited to keep showing up.