Split Personality Career Development, Wants Versus Needs Causing This

I don't want to keep working 120+ hours a week and currently make zero income (temporarily), but the clock is ticking on multiple fronts, and I have had some major set backs (including nearly fatal health issues that I'm still on the long slow climb recovering from).

I am very good at tech, but it is very unhealthy for me physically and socioemotionally. I become the machine, and it is hard on my relationships the more tech I do.

That is why I went into Recreational Therapy, "but they pull me back in"! And I am once again spending long hours working on tech, while also trying to get these blasted third edition books and training courses finished upon which everything hinged on.

What I would like, is to be able to 100% focus on my "branding" given to me by my peers and competitors, as "The Grandfather of Therapeutic [role-playing] gaming".

What I have been forced to do in recent years is come out of semi-retirement since 2003, and get fully back into tech on the side, while continuing to build the vast expanse of the RPG-related vision.

This was going well until I had severe, initially inexplicable health issues beginning around 2012 and worsening over several years. I was down to less than 20% lung function and developing lung scarring with each bout of pneumonia. After about a dozen bouts, and years of tests, doctors finally tracked down the cause, but it still took years to completely change my life to reduce recurrent vulnerabilities. Having to go from a super active outdoors person to having to stay indoors anytime the smoke, pollution, or even colder ambient air temperature dropped bellow 60 degrees, else have another relapse. And the increasingly intense rounds of medications, steroids, pain killers, antibiotics, cough suppressants, etc. wreaked havoc on my body and brain, causing serious cognitive impairments and making every day a struggle for years.

Yet somehow I still kept building up the RPG-related vision through all of this.

Even when COVID hit, I was still out there, traveling the entire US, providing therapeutic services in-person with the mobile facilities or online, and getting the RPG Community center acquired and performing extensive repair work that was very physical.

Now I am slowly improving. I have made it a few months without any meds. But the cold weather is back and I am very vulnerable again.

Getting the property for the community center causes a whole slew of unexpected consequences that have thrown everything into turmoil, especially the insurance related nastiness.

And now I have no income, hugely back in the hole in debt, and my wife's income lower than it was, so our combined income is about 1/3 what it was 2 years ago!

So I am once again in a very unhealthy situation with zero income, on the cusp of everything collapsing.

I once again can't cover rent for the community center, since donations have totally dried up this year. And now I don't have the personal income to cover it anymore.

I have until March 5th, 2025 (really more like 3-6 months before that) to turn around the RPG related projects back to the self sufficiency they had before 2023, and make them once again earn me an income. If I can't do this before the 3 year lease on the property is up, I had to promise my wife I would give up on this decades-lone endeavor of the RPG vision, and just go back to tech full time.

I really, really don't want to have to do this, but the clock is ticking.

Everything for the RPG vision now hinges on:

Getting the Third Edition workbooks, study guides, slideshow presentations, instructor manuals, and online learning management system (LMS) platform updated to the new huge Third Edition standards.

Getting paid workshops, training, and client numbers back up (can't do until books done and people trained first).

I have to get the RPG.LLC breaking 100k/yr, and getting $50k/yr in donations to the non-profit as a bare minimum of survival, but that isn't good enough to save it before the 2025 deadline.

To save the RPG vision, I need to get back to an income from the RPG.LLC that I was making before I tried bringing on employees. I've been paying them first and me last (which means none to me currently), and my RPG income was comparable and starting to outpace my income from tech ($120-$250/hr range).

This isn't beyond possibility to resume having again, but I have to get the books done.

Meanwhile my wife is understandably distressed at this dry spell in our income, and we're both in dire debt teetering on the brink financially.

So she is pushing me to go through this "Bullet Proof Your Career" resume overhaul program and applying for tech jobs ASAP.

But how can I get the RPG vision related book writing done if I am spending all day on resumes and job hunting?

While also working as CTO at multiple companies (not yet paying reliably, just mostly sweat equity so far).

So, thus, the long hours of 120+ per week.

Basically juggling 60 hours a week on tech-related (currently unpaid) work

30 hours a week on RPG vision related work.

10-40+ hours on resume and job hunting for paid tech work.

20-30+ hours on house, facilities, bills, relationship with wife, time etc.

Doesn't leave much for anything like exercise, self-care (music, outdoors, etc.), or even sleep, alas.

I have to turn this around before 2023 is out, or I'm afraid the RPG vision will die on the vine, and I'll be buried just working tech. Which I enjoy, but is very unhealthy for me.

But I may not be the right person to bring the RPG vision fully to viability. I have the vision, but I may not have what is needed to make it work.

Time will tell.

I haven't given up by any means, but I have to say this is the most disheartened I've felt in a very long time.

For now, Onwaaaaaard!