Apr 27–May 5, 2026
This was personally a tough week. There are things I’d been thinking about too naively, and it feels like I need to reassess. It looks like May and June are going to be pretty busy. I need to take stock of my daily life and get the routines that keep me going back in place. There will be things I won’t be able to do for a while, but I need to hold on through May and June. On the bright side, I’ve been waking up early pretty consistently, which is nice. Morning workouts seem to give me the energy to start the day, and I want to keep that habit going.
This week I skipped the contract project and focused on personal projects. I spent time rewriting a new app — one built around features I personally need — from a prototype into a proper product. Since the prototype already has all the necessary features, the rewrite is a chance to add them back one by one while reviewing the code more carefully. I also made plans and started organizing for the INTW app’s 1.4 release. With the 1.3 version, I worked on it whenever I could find time between contract work. This time, I expect to be able to work on it more steadily, so I’m planning to approach it more systematically. Lastly, I’ve been using the Atom One Dark theme in Xcode, and I needed a light version too, so I made one and released it publicly. It’s nice that AI makes it easy to build little things like this even without deep expertise in the area.
Fortunately, INTW hit its minimum April target. Since bottoming out in December, sales have been growing a little each month. It’s not enough to sustain a living, but seeing month-over-month growth feels like a small win. Visibility seems to be the issue, so I’ve been continuously running Product Page Optimization, though I haven’t seen significant changes yet. Metrics aren’t being captured well — probably because sales volume is still too low for the data to be meaningful. I’ve been promoting the app through social media and sharing small introductions here and there, but I think I need to be more aggressive or set a clearer direction.
Lately I’ve been doing almost all my coding with Codex and learning a lot from it. When building a new app or implementing complex features, I can follow along and pick up new approaches. And GPT-5.5 is getting closer and closer to producing the results I’m looking for.
One-third of 2026 has passed. There’s a lot I look back on with some regret, but there’s also a lot still ahead. Let’s keep going.