Getting Back on the Crazy Horse

Hey Folks,

Well, it's been a while. I used to be on here daily. Not the most frequent poster, but I read a lot, and I also used to be on Twitter daily, where most of feed is tech/startups/products. I used to listen to just about every IH podcast as well as several other dev/product podcasts.

I say all this in past-tense as this is my first visit to IH in over a year and my first post in nearly 2 years.

Why? Well, cos I just burned out.

My projects are side projects you see, and with my responsibilities of a mortgage and family, this is necessity rather than choice. I have to prioritise my day job, despite the fact its the very thing I'd been working hard to get away from. I worked nights and weekends for around 30 months solid and I just couldn't keep it going. I didn't want to. Thankfully I wasn't having dark thoughts, but I just didn't have the motivation anymore. I also noticed that could see all these great people on here doing well and I found that it was turning me bitter. That is horrible to admit, but it was the truth. It's not right, and it's not me. Especially with this great community.

Neil Young sang "it's better to burn out, than to fade away". Well, I did both. I stayed away from Twitter. I didn't log in here. I didn't read any AMAs, or listen to any of the podcasts (sorry Courtland! 😬). I took a decision to do this for a little while as the weight of chasing down and executing on products was too much. It was getting to me, and I'd had enough.

I figured I'd stay away for a month or 2, and see how I was feeling. That turned into 6 months, and then I was busy with home DIY projects, and before I knew it, it was 18 months.

I didn't beat myself up during this time as I figured if the weight of it was too much and it was essentially making me unhappy, then there was no point in doing it. There are more important things in life, and I'm very thankful for my wife, kids, family and friends I'm fortunate to have. This is especially important to remember after the last 2 years that we have all endured.

So, the last few months I've been feeling the itch again. The urge to get started on one of the many new ideas I logged during that time (not to mentione all the other hair-brained ideas I already had on the backlog). So why has it taken this long to come back to it? Truth be told, I felt a bit of a failure. I've released very few products, and made a success of none of them so far. And I burnt out in the process.

I released an IPA review site just before I embarked on this indiehacker detox, and do you know what? I've been consistent with logging the reviews with every new IPA I've drank (if not the publishing of them). The irony is, I did this for myself, and I'm pretty sure I don't get any visitors to it! I honestly couldn't care. It's for me, it's something I'm interested in. And that has taught me a valuable lesson - if you want to be consistent, if you want to keep going, you have to have the passion, otherwise it's just additional work (paraphrasing Simon Sinek terribly there but you get the point).

So here I am, I'm back on here. I'm back enjoying the community and marvelling at so many creative people and so many great products. I listened to a few IH podcasts this past weekend and I'm thinking about rebooting some of my projects or kicking off new ones. I might decide not to if I can't settle on one I'm truly passionate about. And now I'm cool with that.

If any of what I've described sounds familiar, take the time away. Find something else to focus your free time on. Don't feel bad. It will still be here if/when you decide to come back. It'll do you the world of good. It will give you perspective. I felt that I had to write this down in case anyone else was going through something similar or worse. If I'm the only one then great, this has been useful for me at least.

Thanks for reading.