[ysavir]

It's easy to feel discouraged, but keep in mind:

1. The author didn't write this overnight. The oldest commits go back to Oct. 2017, three and a half years ago. Imagine what you could accomplish if you worked on something for three and a half years.

2. There are many things we can do with our time, and ultimately we do them all to be happy. Don't measure your own worth by how much product you leave behind. Measure it instead by how happy you are today. Most likely the OP wrote this code because working on it made them happy, and that's great. For many of us, though, the activities that make us happy don't have biproducts. But that doesn't detract from how happy those activities make us. Value the things that you do because they make you happy, not because they appear impressive when held against some external grading scheme.

Edit: list formatting

[nonbirithm]

I wish more people like the author of the OP would feel free to admit things like they were compelled to finish the project because they couldn't see anything else they felt like doing with their time, so that's simply where all the time went. That would make perfect sense in my mind, and restore a notion of calm.

One problem is making assumptions that the author is trying to prove something by a clear display of superiority. The code itself is of a high quality, from what other people are saying. But it's probably only because so much effort was put in for three years on it.

Also, I have to wonder how many other doors the author left closed because he spent so much time on this project. Was there anything else of a similar impact that he contributed to for all those years? And what of the other things he may have passed up?

Some projects will consume you. They will be the tantalizing activity pulling you away from Friday night dinner parties with people you don't understand and other miscellaneous outings that are comparatively less interesting. You constantly think you're leaving something unsaid or undone away from a keyboard. In some cases you feel obligated to continue for no reason other than having already come so close to accomplishing the thing, sunk costs and all.

With some projects, hypothetically, if someone is to see me in a cafe with nothing better to do, I'm almost certainly going to wrap up my current conversation after a point and take out my laptop to continue working. That is how my life is structured with those projects. That is how they affect my actions day after day. It isn't necessarily a life of glory.

Working on projects and having the finished product in my hands is not what brings me happiness; it merely staves off misery. It fills a void in my life that was agonizing up to that point. My theory is that if your goal is to avoid misery and despair at any cost, and have the means to do so, you can be driven out of desperation to accomplish substantial things. Other people could see what I did and make their own guesses as to what it took. But really I was only trying to prevent myself from becoming undone. It was simply too irritating of a problem for me to leave alone. I'll probably never be able to fully explain why. It certainly wasn't because I was trying to prove something to other people.

But I'm only speaking from my personal experience. It's not like I actually understand why the author did what he did. People just don't seem to know at the moment, and maybe that's where the air of sadness over suddenly seeing this accomplishment come out of nowhere originates. There's nothing to counterbalance the impact of learning of its existence within a split second with what actually went on behind the scenes for many orders of magnitude longer.

[thrashtitan]

Why is the only world where OP created this project one of great sacrifice? You mention the code quality; is it not possible OP is simply highly talented from years on the job and this product actually didn't require polish and refinement constantly, OP simply is a better programmer than most?

Your post has a sad undertone, one that it feels like you are trying to apply to OP in order to justify not achieving the heights others have. Some people are insanely good at things. Most people are barely good at anything. Don't think of OP as a bastion of despair, reframe the project as an achievement and I believe you will feel better.

[Dylan16807]

I don't think what I've done for the last three and a half years has made me happier than working on a big project would have, and I have much less to show for it.

I'm not feeling less discouraged.

[ysavir]

Well, now you have a data point. Will you use this reflection to shape the next three and a half years?

[Dylan16807]

I honestly don't know what you're suggesting. A data point isn't motivation, and there is no real way to convert it. This isn't something that can be resolved by making a decision.

It's not that I worked on the wrong project, it's that most months I worked on no project.

I feel like that's pretty normal but it's still bad. I could be just as happy and make more nice things.

[ysavir]

What I'm saying, or more appropriately asking, is whether your impression with the OP's project is inspiring you to change your actions in the future towards being impressed with yourself in similar ways.

> It's not that I worked on the wrong project, it's that most months I worked on no project.

Will you start working on projects in future months?

[Dylan16807]

> What I'm saying, or more appropriately asking, is whether your impression with the OP's project is inspiring you to change your actions in the future towards being impressed with yourself in similar ways.

It doesn't seem to be.

So if I take your advice and imagine what I could accomplish... that just makes the feelings of discouragement worse.

You listed two things to keep in mind. For me the first one actively makes the negative feelings worse and the second one doesn't really apply.

[ysavir]

> So if I take your advice and imagine what I could accomplish... that just makes the feelings of discouragement worse.

That's a good point, and I didn't take a healthy perspective on it. Imagining what we can accomplish in a long span of time can be distressing. The road ahead always appears longer than the road behind; that's why it's so easy to look at the accomplishments of others with awe and then look towards our own intentions and feel anxiety.

A better approach is to not imagine what we could accomplish in three and a half years, and instead just dedicate the next three and a half years to doing the things that make us happy and pleased with what we're building. Projecting our intentions can be daunting, but taking one day to do a bit of code or design is not a big step. And doing it again the next day is no bigger a step. Taking it each day at a time, and taking care to enjoy each of those days at a time, is key to keeping our motivations high. And then some day we look back and realize just how long we've been crafting our craft, and how far it's come. But it all starts with one day's work.