I have a problem: there are a lot of very specific projects that I would want to work on, that currently do not seem to exist, but that I also couldn't realistically do on my own, and it's difficult to even start without someone like-minded to bounce ideas off.
Now I could share my ideas far and wide in detail and hope that someone is interested and responds, but I *also* have ADHD, which means that when they do, I might not be able to get back to them in a timely manner, and it may take quite some time before my interest loops back around to that specific project.
I'll likely keep my focus much better once I have someone else to collaborate with regularly/actively, but even then my availability/focus may be erratic, and it feels unfair to commit to working on a project and then make that someone else's problem.
The easiest thing for me to work with is someone who could commit to collaborating on a project, based on the ideas/goals that I already have, and subject to whenever I happen to have focus available. But that is so unbalanced in terms of what each party is expected to bring to the table, that that also feels unreasonable to ask for.
Not sure what to do about this, or how to proceed from here. Like, I can do a lot of the work, in principle, just not on any sort of predetermined schedule, but for this to work there needs to be some kind of synchronized-ish working on the project.
(Advice welcome, as long as you understand what "having ADHD" means and don't come up with useless 'advice' like "have you tried <neurotypical lifehack> to focus better")
@freakazoid That's the thing, though, there are projects that I would *like* to work on, but that aren't really realistic to get started on unless I have someone to bounce ideas off.
@joepie91 I wonder (it's just an early thought and possibly unrealistic utopia) if something like “really slow-paced forum” for bouncing off such ideas could work? Like, people would submit an idea, others could reply, and when the original author has time and energy, they could start implementing (and maybe form a team with other people there?). Most importantly, everything would explicitly state there are no deadlines and stuff.
Obvsly there are *a lot* of questions like running and moderation of such platform. I don't have all the answers… But I think I'd find something like that helpful. (Feel free to build anything off this idea, maybe the tools are there and I just didn't realise 🤷)
I feel like I tend to have random project ideas, but they either end up in a TODO file, random paper on random desk, README-only repository on some forge or maybe a post here on fedi, which tend to lack discoverability (so no other person) or the social part (so no bouncing off ideas) or temporal stabilty (so unlikely to return to the responses) or all of the above.
I suspect I have ADHD, but maybe it's something adjacent; def can relate to the “I can do work, but not on any sort of predetermined schedule” part.
@joepie91 I am in a very similar boat. I think the best thing to do is to talk about the projects you're interested in working on and see what kind of response you get.
I have been doing this, but generally about projects I actually *am* working on. They're usually fairly small and specialized things, though, things I think I could do myself, like the scanline renderer I've been working on off and on.
I want to make a social game thingamajig with crappy graphics.