Time and time again I spend a considerable amount of time working on a project that I find useful and think: "surely other people will find this useful as well!"
... only to send it into the cosmos, lost in the vast emptiness of the internet.
Maybe it's just delusions of grandeur or my naivety.
It's frustrating to spend so much time and energy building something only to discover no one cares or no one see its potential. Part of me feels like my ideas aren't very good.
Another part of me thinks it has to do with networking. I'm terrible at networking. My social sphere is extremely limited. This is especially true in the developer community. I struggle to gain any traction, no matter how many projects or blog articles I publish. I find the entire endeavor exhausting and not congruent with my personality. I want the result of having a big network without having to engage in it at all. Some people have managed to pull this off rather successfully. They can write a blog post, not advertise it anywhere and get a huge audience to read it.
Social networks seem like they have massive potential to build a large network
of people that will see my projects or ideas, but how do you grow that audience?
I don't like social networks, I find the entire concept toxic and to be
perfectly honest really boring. I'm sure a big reason why I think it's boring is
because it feels like I'm sending my posts directly into /dev/null. Literally
no engagement or interest. And yet, I see some of the dumbest posts get
thousands of "engagements" through clicks, likes, or whatever stupid feature
they support. It sucks.
I try to write thoughtful articles but after every post I hear crickets. Every library I announce I hear crickets. Every project I create I hear crickets.
If I'm the only one using a library, is it really a library?
I keep getting trapped into caring about what other people think. I need to focus on creating things I enjoy and let others come along for the ride.
The end result is I feel like I'm wasting my time or that my ideas aren't that great to begin with. It's probably true, what I'm building isn't that useful. I rarely feel lonely, but when I try to announce a project I'm excited to share with the world only to hear crickets ... it's hard not to feel isolated.