Dear friends of Lambda Island,

It’s been quiet here, too quiet. I know it’s been way too long since the last video went up, and some of you are wondering what on earth is going on.

Here’s the thing, when I launched Lambda Island seven months ago I was convinced that with some dedication and hard work I would be able to be profitable before the end of the year. That turned out to be a bit too optimistic, and by September my reserves were getting dangerously low, to the point where the stress from financial insecurity was starting to affect my health.

There’s a lot of work in IT, but it gets trickier if you’re looking for part-time remote-only work in a niche technology. Eventually I found a suitable project six weeks ago with a non-profit organization here in Berlin. My intention was to do that part time and keep making videos in the meanwhile, but that turned out to be optimistic as well.

The good news is that the project went live yesterday. There are a few small things left to wrap up, but I can finally start focusing again on creating new content. So you can expect regular scheduling to resume in the coming week.

Lambda Island is already bringing in a nice bit of basic income, it covers about a third of my spending now. I’ll also be teaching programming two hours a week, which covers another third. This means the money I made on this recent project should carry me well into the next year.

I’m here for the long run. Enough people have signed up to show that the concept works. It’s just going to take a bit longer than planned, but that’s fine. I’ve been talking to a lot of people at Clojure meetups, at ClojuTRE, at EuroClojure, and I keep hearing the same thing. People are thoroughly impressed by the quality of the videos. It turns out a lot of this stuff just isn’t properly explained anywhere else. I’m very happy to fill that gap, to enable people to enjoy this beautiful technology to the fullest. Trust me, the best is yet to come.

Thank you for supporting me in this journey. Everyone who looked at the videos, who commented, sent in feedback, who subscribed, told their friends, who helped spread the word on social media, your contribution means a lot. Here’s to the next seven months!

Your captain, Arne