First off, thank you for creating an excellent system, it's been much appreciated. I've been one of those users with a feature request, and I was struck by both how fast and cheerfully you addressed it, but also by how much of a toll that level of responsiveness must have taken on you.

Well done for realising you need to step back a bit before it broke you completely, not all manage that. From experience, putting in proper channels for feature requests, issue reports, and even general communications, can make a huge difference to the stress of managing a big project, and give you a lot more control over how much you're dealing with, rather than trying to drink from the firehose that the internet can be. I hope it works for you, and you can go on enjoying working on it.

As you step back from the front line a bit, could you allow others to help in both dealing with public interactions and even the development? I've noticed that Piefed seems to be a one-man project, and that shows through in some places. Bringing in a few more people might help ease the load, bring new perspectives, and even avoid some of the more contentious issues that have come up.