gemini://psztrnk.smol.pub/starting-stopping

I'm really good at starting things. What I'm really bad at, is keeping things alive.

I'm not just good at it, I *love* starting things. I've started, like, a dozen blogs since 2000-or-something, on more platforms I could count, with multiple pieces of software, including Freeblog (a Hungarian platform, now dead), LiveJournal, Blogger.com, Wordpress, Hugo, Jekyll, Kirby, even had a Gopher phlog, plus the ones that I don't even remember.

I love starting new projects. I once started a podcast about my hometown. Then I discontinued and re-started the project as a newsletter (still alive, sort of). I wrote a home library catalog tool in PHP with flat file data storage, which could run on my Raspberry Pi and was accessible via the web.

I was wondering why I love starting new stuff this much. Probably because it is always a challenge. To learn the tech, to learn the platform, to make stuff and to make stuff work.

I am also OK with stopping things. I'm not good at it, because stopping something (even if no one cares about it) always feels bad and I always have some level of compunction.

Anyway, I don't even stop them properly, I mostly just "abandon" them. And I was wondering, why is that. Two explanations: creating something is exciting, while maintaining it -- not so much. Once it becomes a routine, it quickly becomes boring. The thrill of learning and discovering things, to make something work, I am all into that. But keep it patching or watch the platform/tool becoming ever more robust and getting ever more complex (too complex for my needs), I quickly lose interest.

The other explanation is about pressure. If I start something (like a blog, a podcast, a newsletter etc.) and that thing becomes known (sometimes even popular) there is an ever-growing pressure from the audience to create content and publish stuff. I don't like pressure. I don't even know how to handle pressure properly.

I want to do stuff, because I like doing that stuff, not because others expect me to do it. Pressure and expectations murder joy and you cannot be really good at something that you don't enjoy. That is actually happening right now with my newsletter. I haven't had the time to write coherent, longform stuff in the past couple of weeks. And people are already pinging me about it.

On the other hand, I understand if someone creates content of any type, then they should expect such enquiries. But I find it hard to accept such pressure for unpaid, pure-joy pet projects. But that contradiction probably exists only in my head.

Bottom line is, I tend to abandon my side projects. I just wait until they are forgotten and then I archive and delete them. And I struggle with my conscience for a while. Then I move on.

And I was also wondering whether this is a good (well, more like: neutral) or a bad thing. And I decided that it is neither, it is just "perfectly fine".

Whatever I do in my free time, it should bring joy. Otherwise there is no point in doing it. It is absolutely fine to start things that make you happy. And it is totally OK to stop doing them or abandon them (for a while or altogether) if the joy is gone.

Comments are welcome -- send them to uptempo07.brines [the usual symbol] icloud.com.

On starting and stopping things