This year has been a big one for my mental health. Early in 2018 I was diagnosed with Bipolar II. The treatment helped, although I still found myself struggling with motivation and concentration. While I could barely look at my taxes for more than a minute without needing to get up and make yet another cup of tea, somehow my brain was fine at learning how to transpile C# code at 2am.

In 2017 I spent some time working with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA). While I developed a number of software tools in that role, what made me truly effective was the fact that I could develop everything open source. The amount of advice, pull requests, and feedback that I enthusiastically received from public experts was tremendous, and I’m sure that this was helped in no small part by the fact that I was working for a high-profile humanitarian organisation.

Ever since then, I’ve been thinking. What if I could do humanitarian open source outreach as a job?

A few months ago I was diagnosed with type II bipolar, and while some of you who know me might feel that was obvious, it was not obvious to me. I want to talk about what the diagnosis means, what it’s like to have Bipolar II, and the effect my medications are having.

Here’s a free dystopian setting for you to use in your next near-future sci-fi! If you want to have a pleasant day, or not think about climate change, then you may wish to skip this post.

It’s with great delight that myself and @nayafia are hosting Contribute at OSCON this year.