My plan for Oct - Dec 2026

Dear Board of Directors, it has come to my attention you expect me to make number go up. While I am sympathetic to this position, I resent the need to focus on number. But I will do as I'm directed! I present before you, dear Board, my plan for the next three months to make number go up.

I left my job as a software developer recently. The timing was right for a variety of reasons, and I'm proud of the work I did. I've got lots to reflect on and possibly share. But my dream has always been to be able to do my own thing when it comes to software development and creativity. So this is the first week where I've "gone indie" as I like to call it.

My intent was to take this first week slow, rest a bit, and have some space before jumping into what's next. I took is slow on Monday by doing some writing, taking care of some chores, and playing a little bit of Shenmue II. But I realized I'm ready to get to work on the future. Maybe I'll take a staycation in a few months. But since Tuesday, I've been working on my own projects with full focus.

My video and post about quitting AI for coding going weirdly viral (the video has over 1 million views) was the signal I needed to take the leap of trying to do my own thing. It resonated with a lot of people, and I've got a lot to say about the craft and state of the industry.

Even if I'm not able to earn a sustainable living with my efforts, I'll learn a whole lot and make some interesting stuff. In the best case scenario, I'll be able to do what I'm setting out to do for years to come.

That viral video did not generate enough money to even pay for a month of childcare for one of my kids. YouTube ad revenue isn't all that much. But I've got a bunch of data points and numbers now, which helped me realize there's a way this could work out. And those numbers will influence my plan for the next three months. But before I get into that, let me start with my mission...

I want to advocate for software made for humans, by humans. That's my mission. I think that the way software developers and tech companies are going about the integration of LLMs into building software is harmful and unsustainable. I want to push back against that and be an example of someone coding without LLMs. It's sorely needed. Similarly, I want to create resources for people who want to learn to code without AI. There are the books, blog posts, and courses from before the rise of LLMs in software development, but I think being able to follow along with and support new resources is important. Even if those learning go on to using LLMs to generate code, it's essential to understand the code being generated and how computers and software work. From teaching coding to kids in summer camps to writing books, I've always loved sharing knowledge and teaching. So I want to continue to do that, and it's aligned with my mission. And lastly, I want to organize communities of people who are questioning or rejecting the use of AI, as humans are at the center of all of this and there is strength in numbers.

I need to be able to fund that mission. I've got enough runway for at least six months, which is something I am grateful for and will try to make the most of. Ideally I'll be able to earn enough to make that runway last longer (even more ideally, in perpetuity). My wife and I reviewed our spending and tightened up our budget. Our major expenses are childcare and housing; they're about 68% of our spending, with the rest being things like food, electric, auto maintenance, etc. Full-time childcare for two kids where we live in the US is shockingly expensive.

With my wife's income factored in, I would need to earn about US$7000/mo (gross, pre-tax) for us to break even and not draw off of savings. Right now, based on September's numbers, I'm earning about US$1,000/mo from YouTube ad revenue, YouTube memberships, Playdate book sales, and donations, with YouTube ad revenue being the biggest portion of that.

A primary goal for me over the next three months is to figure out: can I make my indie income go up consistently to trend toward that $7000/mo goal? I don't have to reach that in three months, but I want to see if I can make number go up in a repeatable, sustainable way that would make the runway last longer and eventually break even each month.

Given YouTube ad rev is the biggest income source, I'm going to focus on making videos for the next three months. I want to see if putting more time and effort into making videos (so both more quantity and higher quality) results in revenue growth. Napkin math from looking at the numbers of my recent videos is about US$1 for every 1,000 views. So a video with 50,000 views earns about US$50 in ad revenue. The video with a million views earned a little over US$1,000. It's not precise and can vary based on video length and the going ad rate. But that gives a sense of what ad rev pulls in.

I haven't been able to consistently make videos that break 100,000 views. The viral video was an anomaly. Videos where I talk about rejecting AI get more views than my other videos. It seems like within a few weeks the AI-related vids get around 50,000 views. Looking at other videos and channels, it seems like it is possible to make number go up.

There are some concerns I have with this though. I don't want to exclusively talk about how AI is bad, as it's quite exhausting for me and already doesn't feel sustainable. Like many people, I'm a bit sick of hearing and thinking about AI. But I also want to fight against it because of the harms.

It's also difficult for me to try to make videos that I think will be popular because time and time again, when I think a video will be a "big hit" it tends to not be at all. For example, I thought my video about using a dumbphone for a year would be a viral sensation but it didn't do nearly as well as the anti-AI videos. I do not have a good sense of what makes some videos do better than others. The marketing people of the world are screaming "it's the algorithm!" and I have very little appetite for thinking about how I can appease YouTube's algorithm. That's the path to madness for me. I will continue to make authentic videos sharing my thoughts, experiences, and knowledge regardless of whether or not a given video will do well based on my perception of what the algorithm "wants."

I have some other boundaries with my YouTube videos as well. I have said no to all sponsors, as I cannot imagine myself reading ads and editing them into my videos. I do everything I can in my life to excise advertising, as I do not want to see them or hear them. I don't like ads, and I don't want to read ad copy, even if it means leaving money on the table. Also, weirdly enough, most of the sponsors reaching out are making AI products, which is annoying because there's no way I would promote an AI-powered product. I am also unwilling, at least currently, to edit out clips of my videos into short-form content for YouTube Shorts or TikTok. I think that format is too addictive and shallow, and I don't want to contribute to it. While I do think there are little soundbites of what I say that would work well in that format, I don't want to contribute to the proliferation of that style of media.

Instead, I've set up Memberships for my YouTube channel where people can join and financially support me, similar to Patreon. It was very easy to configure and the overhead to manage it all is minimal, which is appealing to me right now. I make exclusive videos for members, and so far, so good! I've got over ten supporters about a week in. I'd much rather focus my efforts and energy on making videos for members and fundraising that way instead of thinking about the YouTube algorithm and doing ad reads for companies.

Even though I've been making YouTube videos for over ten years, I have a lot of concerns about the platform and Google itself. There are a bunch of bad AI features in YouTube Studio that you can't disable. I try my best to not use any Google products. Google itself makes and pushes their AI products relentless. Basically, I think Google is a bad company. So it feels weird to make videos for their platform that is contributing to their bottomline. But on the other hand, I don't think I'd be able to reach 1 million people with a long form video in another way. I also wouldn't be able to earn that income in quite the same way (even though it is via ads, people can pay for YouTube Premium to not have ads or use ad blockers, so that's the mental gymnastics I use to be okay with it). For now, at least, I'm going to focus on making YouTube videos for the next three months to see what happens. My plan is to do a mixture of ramble-style podcast monologues, videos about the craft of software engineering, educational screencasts, and maybe interviews and more edited video essays. I need to figure out a bit of a cadence for video publishing.

I don't want to put all of my eggs into the YouTube basket, for the various reasons I stated. I planting some independent seeds now that could grow over time, either as additive to the YouTube efforts or to become my focus. One aspect is this blog where I can write and share my thoughts. I love writing and reading, and if I could wave a wand and choose any career, I'd like to be a writer. I'm interested in broadcasting too and love podcasts. So my plan is to take my monologue videos and extract the audio and create a podcast feed hosted in a place I own and control. I've also got a newsletter that could be a good place to share what I am up to in written form, maybe there's potential there for monetization?

Also, platforms like Patreon and Ko-Fi that are independent of YouTube and Google are appealing. Ko-Fi in particular seems more friendly to artists and creators and less investor-driven than Patreon. So I could imagine setting up a Ko-Fi for the podcast and writing and member vids if things seem to go well with the YouTube memberships. I'm also interested in exploring the idea of using Ko-Fi to fund development of my 2D game engine Usagi.

Getting the podcast feed up and running with a very simple process is something I think I can do over the next three months. The other stuff (Ko-Fi, newsletter efforts, etc.) are ideas for the future. I don't want to bite off more than I can chew.

Beyond making videos and writing blog posts, there are some projects I want to dig into over the next three months. It's possible this is too ambitious, but on my mind:

• Reject AI - a simple website outlining the problems with LLMs and the companies that make them and how excise it from your life
• Book about coding without AI - I've outlined and begun writing a book I'd likely self-publish making the case for coding without AI.
• Humancrafted Forum - continue to hangout and grow that as a space for devs and designers to share their experiences and build community
• Usagi v1.4 - I would like to take a couple weeks to focus on adding some oft-requested features and fixes to the game engine
• Smaller software projects - I've got a lot of ideas for smaller software applications and libraries that would feed into educational resources and supporting my projects, and just for fun and learning

Writing all that out, it's probably too much in addition to videos! I'll have to prioritize them and approach them each as projects and not concurrent efforts. Some of them could generate revenue but others are just for fun and learning. I want to figure out how to strike that balance.

I could do some sort of contracting or consulting work in the future to help earn income. We'll see. But for now, it's nice to focus on my indie efforts. I'm also interested in making commercial software (desktop apps or web apps). There's also the option of applying for software engineering jobs, but it's unclear to me how viable that is as someone who will not use LLMs and chatbots. But I've got some options to explore before I consider pursuing an entirely different career and craft.

Multiple times in my life I have tried to "make it" as an indie game developer, where I set out to make a game or multiple games and sell them commercially and pursue that dream. Earlier in 2026 I worked half-time at my job for two months to pursue this idea and recover from burnout (this is when I made Usagi Engine), and through that experience, I realized I'm just not cut out for the long production cycle making games requires. I think I'm better at starting and finishing smaller efforts over the course of days and weeks rather than months and years. This was an important lesson for me to learn. Making and selling commercial games is incredibly difficult and competitive. When I put on my business hat (think Cat in the Hat's), I realized that many many many more games fail than succeed. And I very much understand high-quality games take at least six months if not much longer to make, even with a focused scope. So I've put that indie game dev dream to the side. And I think with this current plan and approach of focusing on creating videos, podcasts, writing, resources, and tools, I'm more likely to succeed.

In terms of my technical focus and growth, I'm going to focus on Rust. If I ever return to working as a software developer for another company, I'd like to shift my efforts to being lower level than building web applications with Ruby on Rails or React. I like Rust a lot, I've been using it for almost five years now. Usagi is built with Rust. And there's lots that can be made with the language. So I'm going to focus my learning and the creation of educational resources around the Rust programming language.

I like to think I'm an organized person. Since having kids, some parts of life feel a bit messy and chaotic. But I'm good for doing focused, deep work consistently. Whether that's coding or writing or editing. My productivity system has been, for at least a decade, Getting Things Done. Sometimes I'm more rigorous with it than others. I've started to better organize my indie project and video ideas so I can move them through a bit of a production pipeline and prioritize them easily. I'm using Todoist for that. I'm also using Todoist for capturing other tasks and organizing project efforts where I feel I need that. Nothing too wild or exciting there.

I would like to get better about planning each week. This week is my first week so I am not going to be too hard on myself for it being a bit disorganized. Mentally though I've noticed without a clear plan, I don't exactly know what I'm working toward or why. So I'd like to go into each week with a plan to move me toward my goals and mission. Then for each day, I want it to look like:

Based on the plan for the week, I'll time-block specific tasks in that major 4 hour block. This can all be flexible, but that's what I'd like each day to look like.

This is my plan for the next three months! I'm excited to see how it goes and what I learn. I'm hopeful I'll make some interesting, useful things. I'm going to do my best to see what comes of it. I'll follow up with how it goes and what I learn. Thank for reading and following along!

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