The previous method of working I sketched out in this blog (working on small projects, writing about them in public) is not working for me. It was working for me for a while, mostly while I was building at the Recurse center, but it's not anymore, and it's because I just don't feel motivated to work on lots of small projects that no one uses.

The good news is I've found a method of working on side projects that does work for me: working on one side project at a time, with the intention of getting real users. This is a way of working I previously tried explicitly to steer away from - I've written previously on my blog that I wanted to work on lots of small projects instead of obsessively on one big project.

I am not cut out for serious research. I am not an expert in any field and do not have the ability to contribute to any kind of frontier research. What I am capable of is building simple but creatively designed tools for simple problems I do understand. I have some more grandiose ideas that have contain some promise, but they will only come to fruition if I stay humble and rooted. I am not going to reinvent computing, and that's OK. I've written previously about local first computing. I still agree with everything in principle, but the truth is I don't have the chops to push forward the technology behind it, and the tools simply aren't simply developed enough to build something regular people can use. For the time being, I will build cloud apps, because that's what regular people will use, and it matters to me that people actually use what I've built (another reason to give up trying to build research prototypes).

I turned 25 a month ago. As a teenager, it was easy to harbor all sorts of fantasies about someday uncovering some hidden genius within myself and changing the world. In my early twenties, I'd sometimes still dream of this. No longer. I am not throwing in the towel, I am not giving up on trying to make an impact on the world, but I am giving up on the hope that I have some kind of extraordinary talent. I don't, and that's fine. I am merely competent at many things and that's enough - history is full of men with merely average talent that achieved great things. In the spirit of all this, I've been working on a musical journaling app that connects to your Spotify and allows you to leave notes on your music. It is not going to revolutionize computing, but it has helped me reflect more on my musical inspirations and shape my guitar playing. It's pretty far along, and I'm proud of what I've built, but I'm waiting on Spotify to approve my API integration request. I can't wait to show you when it's ready.

[read on my blog]

nick chen’s blog

An Update