It is Friday, 14h37. I just submitted an app for Apple to review. I worked past 2am last night to get things done. Things were not done then and they are not done now. But done enough. I am very tired. My neck hurts. I still need to bake a cake with my daughter for her birthday party tomorrow. Why am I doing this?
I have a list that is embarrassingly long. A list of projects. Projects that never saw the light of day. Some projects are excusable, they were tools that helped other things, or they were hands-on learning experiments, or they were merely quick flights of fantasy, or they lead to a dead-end. A folder with > 100 started projects, boxes with half built electronics projects, a finished floor without a skirting, wood and cork for a pin-up board, diagrams stuck to the wall for making a stackable planter system out of cast concrete a fish tank that probably cycled a month ago. The list goes on. I do not care to take account of half-written posts.
But today I took one idea, kicked it out the door, shipped. Well, not exactly today, it took a while, it took some grinding, it took persistence, it required learning new things, it required doing things I don’t like doing, it required answer “why am I doing this” multiple times.
It doesn’t look good. The implementation is not up to my professional standards. It’s taken up time that I could otherwise have been paid for. I had to learn tools and environment I do not care for. It took some of my sleep. I’m not sure that I feel proud. Why am I doing this?
Maybe the answer is simple - I like making stuff. I want people to use the stuff I make. I’d like it to be useful to them. I’d like the act of doing so to sustain me financially. Will this project achieve all that? Any of that? Who knows?
And it’s not done, not yet. They say ‘build it and they will come’, but more often it seems that “build it” is neither a sufficient nor necessary and there are plenty of arguments with evidence to support them.
Why am I doing this? I know that question will haunt me again. Especially as I move into a phase that is a lot less “build it” and a lot more “they will come”.
But with or without answer, this project will go off the list. There is a defined end I am pursuing. I will reach it. And I will share more about the project. And I will write again.