The Bog of Despair.

2026-09-14

The Bog Of Despair.

I am at a point in my life where even though I am going through the motions, I feel empty and hollow inside. I am 63 years old, and I feel as if I have achieved nothing.

Yes, I had an eleven-year career at the South African Railways, serving them through three progressive changes: South African Transport Services, Transnet, and finally Metro Rail.

Yes, I ran my own business, 0tronix Developments, creating media, building websites, and doing administration for small companies. But that also turned out to be a lost cause and I was forced to close it down due to lack of profitability.

Yes, I worked as a shop-fitter, installing and repairing British American Tobacco cigarette kiosks and unitary for over five years.

There is another person who has become an inseparable part of this story.

His name is Juelz.

We have been together since 2006.

He is my roommate, my friend, my creative partner, and someone whom I have come to regard as my spiritual son.

I use the words spiritual son deliberately.

I have never wanted to claim a position in his life that he himself has not given me. I cannot tell you whether he sees me as a father figure. I cannot tell you what he thinks of me when we disagree, or whether there are times when he resents me.

Only Juelz can answer those questions.

What I can tell you is how I see him.

I have watched him struggle.

I have watched him learn.

I have watched him grow.

We have spent nearly two decades sharing a life that neither of us would probably have imagined back in 2006.

Juelz — My Friend, My Spiritual Son, My Partner.

We have argued.

We have disagreed.

We have encouraged one another.

We have prayed together.

We have eaten together.

We have listened to audiobooks together.

We have worked on computers together.

We have created music together.

And we have built things together.

Our relationship is not perfect.

How could it be?

Two human beings living together for twenty years, sharing financial pressures, frustrations, dreams, failures, successes, and the ordinary irritations of daily life are inevitably going to have their moments.

But there is something underneath all of that.

We have stayed.

That matters.

We have also become economically interdependent. Neither of us currently earns enough independently to live comfortably, and so our shared life has become, in part, a matter of survival.

That reality can place enormous pressure on any relationship.

Sometimes I wonder whether our friendship would look different if money were not such a constant source of pressure.

I don’t know.

But I also know that reducing our relationship to financial dependence would be unfair.

We share a faith.

We share ideas.

We share interests.

We share work.

We share a history.

And we share a vision.

Juelz is not simply the person who happens to occupy the other side of my home.

He is part of the PlebWare story.

He is part of my life story.

Whether he sees me as a father figure, a friend, a mentor, a partner, or simply an old man with whom he has somehow managed to survive twenty years of life is ultimately his decision.

I cannot define his feelings for him.

I can only define my own.

And my own truth is simple:

I care about him.

Two Decades Of Trying.

We coined the word Plebware together.

We built online platforms together.

We created music together using Virtual DJ, Audacity, and FL Studio.

Today we use AI audio generators, Mixxx, and LMMS alongside some of those original tools.

We are working together on PlebMachine.

I am mostly responsible for the coding and graphic elements, while Juelz is responsible for reviewing, research, and audio production.

We have created.

We have learned.

We have experimented.

We have failed.

We have started again.

And yet, for all the achievements and milestones, we remain frustrated because we are not making real progress financially.

You have to understand something.

Together, we have been pursuing this vision since 2006.

It is now 2026.

Twenty years later, and we have still not made a cent from all our endeavours.

That is a difficult thing to admit.

The Strange Economics Of Doing Something Good.

To make matters worse, PlebMachine is open source and will always remain free.

We are not developing it because we want to sell the software.

We are developing it because we believe it can help ordinary people.

That creates an interesting problem.

Doing something worthwhile and making money from doing it are not necessarily the same thing.

We have great hopes that PlebMachine will be a genuine help to many people.

We also hope that the recognition it receives will open doors for us — doors through which we can earn an income from writing, audio, video creation, research, development, and the other digital skills we have spent years developing.

That has been the dream for more than twenty years.

But dreams have a shelf life.

At some point, a person has to ask whether perseverance has become stubbornness.

Why Have I Rekindled PlebWare?

PlebWare is a solid concept.

I genuinely believe it has a role to play in helping us secure a sustainable income.

Besides, I am a determined individual who refuses to give up easily on a good idea.

So I have decided to give PlebWare one more serious attempt.

Not an endless attempt.

Not a romantic belief that somehow everything will magically work out.

A serious attempt.

There is a difference.

I am prepared to work.

I am prepared to learn.

I am prepared to change direction where necessary.

And I am prepared to accept reality if the experiment fails.

Because there comes a point where you have to smell the roses, as they say.

If PlebWare cannot become sustainable, then perhaps I will eventually have to accept that it was a good idea that simply did not work commercially.

That would hurt.

But failure is not the same thing as having done nothing.

Artificial Intelligence — Our Knight In Shining Armour.

The variable I believe may represent the greatest breakthrough for us is the advent of Artificial Intelligence.

For years, some of our greatest limitations were financial.

We could not afford external programmers.

We could not afford researchers.

We could not afford professional editorial assistance.

We could not afford to employ designers, developers, analysts, and other specialists every time we needed help.

Artificial Intelligence has changed that equation.

By leveraging AI, we have already saved hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of work.

Tasks that once required days of research can sometimes be reduced to hours.

Problems that once stopped development can now be investigated.

Code can be examined.

Ideas can be challenged.

Articles can be edited.

Research can be organised.

And concepts that previously remained trapped inside my head can actually be turned into working projects.

That does not mean AI does everything for us.

It doesn’t.

We still have to think.

We still have to make decisions.

We still have to test things.

We still have to correct mistakes.

And ultimately, we still have to do the work.

But for two people with limited financial resources, AI has become something we could never afford to buy in human form:

A team.

The Bog Is Still There.

And this is where I find myself today.

I am still in the bog.

I am not going to pretend otherwise.

I still have moments when I look at my life and wonder what I have actually achieved.

I look at sixty-three years and ask myself whether this is all there is.

I look at twenty years of PlebWare and wonder why we are still struggling.

I look at my circumstances and sometimes find it difficult to see a road leading anywhere.

That is despair.

It is not weakness to acknowledge it.

Sometimes the Christian life is portrayed as though faith means never feeling discouraged.

I don’t believe that.

The Bible is full of people who reached the end of themselves.

David cried out from places of despair.

Elijah became exhausted and wanted to give up.

Job questioned everything.

Even the strongest people in Scripture experienced moments when they could no longer see the way forward.

Faith does not mean pretending the bog isn’t there.

Faith means believing there is still a way through it.

Perhaps I Have Been Measuring The Wrong Thing.

Maybe the greatest mistake I have made is measuring my life exclusively by financial success.

If money is the only measurement, then yes, I have failed spectacularly.

Twenty years of PlebWare and not a cent.

Businesses closed.

Jobs ended.

Plans abandoned.

Projects restarted.

But perhaps that is not the complete story.

I learned skills.

I created things.

I helped people.

I shared knowledge.

I wrote.

I built.

I experimented.

I encouraged others.

I stayed beside someone who needed companionship.

And despite everything, I am still creating.

That counts for something.

Perhaps the real question is not:

“What have I achieved?”

Perhaps the better question is:

“What have I become?”

One More Walk.

I don’t know whether PlebWare will succeed.

I don’t know whether PlebMachine will ever open the doors we hope it will open.

I don’t know whether my writing will ever generate the income I need.

I don’t know whether the next chapter of my life will be prosperous, modest, or simply another struggle.

But I do know something.

I am not dead yet.

I am still thinking.

I am still learning.

I am still writing.

I am still building.

I am still creating.

I am still praying.

And I am still walking.

Perhaps that is what I need to remember when the bog gets deep.

I don’t have to see the other side.

I don’t even have to know exactly where the path leads.

I only have to find the next piece of solid ground.

Then the next one.

And the next.

Maybe that is what perseverance really is.

Not some heroic march toward victory.

Sometimes it is simply refusing to lie down in the mud.

A Final Thought.

At sixty-three, I am beginning to understand that life does not always provide the ending we imagined when we were young.

There may be no grand moment when everything suddenly makes sense.

There may be no enormous financial reward waiting around the next corner.

There may be no guarantee that PlebWare will become the success we have dreamed about for twenty years.

But there is still today.

There is still work worth doing.

There are still people worth encouraging.

There are still ideas worth exploring.

There are still stories worth telling.

And, most importantly for me, there is still God.

So perhaps I am not standing at the end of my road.

Perhaps I am simply standing in a particularly deep part of the bog.

The bog of despair is real.

But so is the road beyond it.

I just cannot see it yet.

And until I can see it, I will keep walking.

The Prayer Of A Man In The Bog.

Lord,

I don’t have a great speech today.

I don’t have a victory report.

I don’t have financial success to celebrate.

I simply have myself.

Sixty-three years of life.

A head full of ideas.

A heart that is tired.

And a stubborn determination not to give up.

If there is still work for me to do, show me what it is.

If PlebWare still has a purpose, help me find it.

If I need to change direction, give me the wisdom to recognise it.

If I need to let something go, give me the courage to release it.

And if I am simply walking through a dark valley rather than standing at the end of my journey, give me the strength to keep walking.

I don’t ask for riches.

I ask for purpose.

I don’t ask for an easy life.

I ask for the strength to live the life You have given me.

And when I cannot see the road ahead, help me trust the One who can.

Amen.

✍️ Othello Cody Verrocchio
with ChatGPT.