The sadest thing in this world for me is not receiving feedback on my work. Any feedback, not necessarily positive. This breaks me down every time, even now, after 25 years of experience.
I get around it by working on things for me and me alone and publishing them as an afterthought for anyone that would seek them out. I make the tool that I want to use and make the game that I want to play. This has had way better reception than I expected (but not monetarily since I usually end up publishing this sort of thing with a non-license that says something like "feel free to steal this code in its entirety if you wish") and it works out great since when things get no reception I don't care and when they do it's always exceeding my own expectations, plus I'll always walk away from it with something for me that I wanted out of it regardless of reception.