Newsletter #1

A warm hello to Doppel Diner's guests!

As I am celebrating my Birthday today I decided to share a little personal story of how the development of Doppel Diner started! During the last four years, I was getting my Bachelor's in game design, leading a student environmental organization, and working as a call center operator in a board games shop. I always had so much energy and willingness to work that I started to regularly put all-nighters, sometimes two in a row, thinking everyone does the same. It was initially fun: the overwork would only hurt me from time to time and I would spend a week just not being able to get out of bed and sleeping for 18 hours per day. Then my "ups and downs" got worse over time which was very frustrating. Is it depression? Did I just recover? Why it happened again? Eventually, I was barely able to keep up with my previous lifestyle and only relied on occasional super-productive elevated moods.

In 2021, I moved to Sweden alone in the middle of the pandemic, and it was my absolute lowest. Not hoping for much, I scheduled an online meeting with a psychiatrist thinking it would take SESSIONS to even get my complicated story straight. But she started to ask me questions as if she saw right through me. Questions like do your thoughts race through while you are having a "good" episode? Does it always happen after sleep deprivation? Does it always get even worse afterward? What she saw was not chaos, but symptoms and patterns, and just a half-hour earlier I knew what Bipolar Disorder is. I went back and started medications that helped a lot, but it wouldn't compete with this feeling of finally understanding all those years.

I turn 24 now, but I am creating Doppel Diner for a 20-year-old me, who would save years of a tiresome journey by just knowing Bipolar Disorder exists. For more details, check out my pitch presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1AnT9e6zNiv5KVysIKwrmYK4YP_U3-sWDMJ_jn4ZqXEU/edit?usp=sharing

Thank you for your support!