Good morning, everyone, and thanks for your valuable comments!
Hey, Dark Ark - very good that you mention the legal aspect. That is essential, and I forgot to clarify that. So, here is a bit more of the background details:
This house was not listed for sale. I just saw the place had been sitting uninhabited for years, so I contacted the owners directly and asked if they are willing to sell the place. At first they were hesitant, but to my great delight they agreed. And, sure, in Finland we have legislation regulating this kind of things, and there are consequences for those who attempt to sell and overpriced house by telling faulty or dishonest stuff about the real condition of that house. So, pretty much because of that the people who sold the house suggested a deal: Basically, I paid only for this plot of land, and got the buildings for free - in whatever condition they happen to be. Therefore the legal document includes that remark "in unlivable condition", for it gives a good night's sleep for the sellers. That way I can't sue them for telling lies. Absolutely not a problem for me, at that time I was willing to take the risk. Despite being severely depressed around those times I somehow had this inner faith that "I can manage, things will work out."
And it has definitely been worth it. Also, in different phases of the renovation project I have used the services of experienced professionals to evaluate the critical parts. And based on that I have made my project plans, and so far everything has been good - the place turned out to be in a better condition than the previous owners thought, so I kind of a won in this deal, getting a nice place for myself for a rather low price.
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Then, an another thing is my sometimes-a-little-bit-tricky-sense-of-humour, characteristic of The Savonian people which I identify myself with. Earlier in this thread I was told that "depression is not cured by therapy, and one way to back that claim is to point out that after 20+ years of therapy Erkka still has some minor mental health issues to work with." Reading that kind of assumptions made me think that such a claim is about as plausible as stating "renovation doesn't help, if after 12+ years you still have some minor improvements waiting to be done". But at that point I just rolled my eyes and ignored the stuff. But then, on the other hand - speaking openly about mental health issues, and about how to recover from then has been one of the purposes of my blog. During the years of writing the blog I've had some personal feedback from readers who have found it valuable and helpful how I share my experience. So that has given me a more deeper sense of purpose with writing the blog. Because of this kind of reasons I wanted to return to this theme, just using a little bit of humour.
Using the same analogue: 12 years ago I still had some suicidal feelings every now and then. Sometimes I got panic attacks triggered by small mundane events. Sometimes I had to sit completely still staring into the void, waiting for my mind to calm down for I knew eventually it would do so. Most of the time I felt that my brain is full of fog or mist. And I went to therapy to learn more about why those things happen, and what can be done with them. I had already learnt that those stuff are not because of my actual situation in life, but more like flash-backs and post-reactions to a row of severely traumatic events I had to go through earlier in my life. To survive those traumatic events a human psyche often uses different kinds of coping methods, and for me some events - like facing several situations of nearly-lethal violence when I was still just a vulnerable kid - left me with a tendency to dissociate away from the situation. With therapy I learnt that part of my mind is still stuck with the dissociation, making me feel foggy inside. And that there are methods to work with that, to reverse the dissociation. To dissolve the internal panic so that panic attacks won't happen any more. After a long slow process with the therapy I find myself in a rather good condition. No more suicidal thoughts, no more panic attacks, no more heavy depressed days. 12 years ago there were days when I had trouble getting up from the bed, for right in the morning I felt that my life is miserable and I don't want to face this world. Nowadays I enjoy my life with a deep sense of purpose and meaning. But there is still some of that dissociation fog left, and I need to keep on working with that. Luckily, I have found professional therapists who master some good methods to address that kind of issues.
Hehe, and while I have been slowly dragging myself through those heavier years of depression, on the side I've still managed to contribute pieces of help in The UnReal World coding project. I remember there were weeks when I felt persistent emotional pain all the time. To cope with that I coded projectile trajectory algorithms for Sami to track arrow flight in the game. Or the weather simulation. And the random map generator. All that kind of pieces of code have been written while suffering from more or less severe mental health issues. And participating in the game project, seeing the audience enjoy the game, it has also been a valuable part in my own recovery project.
So, here we are now. I feel that the therapeutic processes have worked wonders - even though there still are some minor issues requiring further work, I deeply feel that my depression has been cured, and nowadays in my blog I often write about the chronic depression in past tense - something which I had earlier, but it is not there any more. What remains is something more like a mild but persistent post-depression state. So, from my point of view this is just an example that even if some mental recovery processes might take some time, it clearly is so that therapy can help cure depression. Just like renovation can help cure 'unlivability' of a house.
Oh well - enough of my personal stories
My point is: I see both my mental health and my long-term house renovation project being in such a good shape that I have more focus and energy for further Enormous Elk coding projects. And that I wanted to mention this, because I'm perfectly well aware that many of our long-term followers might remember some of my earlier phases, when I've been able to code small focused pieces for Sami, but I wasn't in a good enough shape to consistently manage a bigger project. Things have been becoming a lot better, and I find new joy in our indie coding projects. And, naturally, it remains to be seen what comes out of this. I have hope and I have plans and I have a lot of development-phase code. Week by week that code grows into something more, so eventually it will be enough for a playable demo. Work in progress
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