The Experiment
The Experiment
Ideas, Stress, and Time
I remember someone saying once that ideas were worthless, and onlyimplementation mattered. I disagree. Ideas have power, and depending on whoyou are, that power can be used to either create, or destroy. Or, in my case,both. When I get an idea, the drive to make that idea become reality canconsume me. I may do nothing about it for days, weeks, or even months, andthen, seemingly suddenly, put all of my time and energy into it in one bigexplosion. During the time leading up to the creation phase, I’m thinking. Atnight while I drift off to sleep, during the day when there is a lull in mywork flow, during all the little times that something else is not occupying mycognitive functions, I’m thinking about my idea. I consider the idea, I pokeit and prod it from as many different angles as I can until I get to a pointwhere I know how to make it real. Or, at least as real as my limited knowledgebase can facilitate.
My problem with the thinking/creating loop is that what I’m thinking about andwhat I’m creating may not be what’s best for me at the time. The offsetbetween what I should be thinking about and what I actually am thinkingabout creates unnecessary stress in my life, and makes it harder toconcentrate on things that I need to be concentrating on, when I need to beconcentrating on them. Having an idea that may lead to the accomplishment of alife-long goal is a wonderful thing, if the idea comes at a time when a personcan actually act on it without neglecting other commitments. Unfortunately,that is not the situation that I find myself in now.
Masters
Last Fall I enrolled in the Masters of Human-Computer Interaction program atIowa State University. When I finish this semester I’m in the middle of rightnow, I’ll be at the half-way point. The program is entirely online, so I cancontinue to work at my day job as a systems administrator while I work atnight on my assignments. The course load is more than I was expecting, and thecourse work takes far more time than I thought I would need. I spend severalhours on the weekends, and several nights each week studying. Some classeshave been a lot of fun, others have felt like pushing a bolder up a hill. I’mlucky enough right now to have two classes that I’m enjoying, one onprogramming in Python, and another on the fundamentals of design.
My hope for the Masters degree is that it will lead to exciting newopportunities in the future. Something that my experience as a systemsadministrator alone would not. While I enjoy my work, I feel like I could domore, and I do not feel like it is ultimately going to fulfill that life-longgoal I was referring to above.
So, I work during the day, and I go to school at night. In between times I trymy best to be a good husband and father to my family. We have four kids, andthey all need time with Dad. So, we do stuff, fishing, roller-coasters, bikerides, cooking… lots of stuff. Stuff that, really, is more important thananything else. The kind of stuff that gives me a reason to get up in themorning.
My obligations to my family are clear, as are my obligations to my employer,as well as my obligations to Iowa State. However, grad school was not the onlything I started last Fall. I also started FarmdogSoftware.
Farmdog
Everyone is busy, everyone has obligations, and no one is going to think thatI’ve taken on too much, especially those who have started successful softwarecompanies. What I’ve told myself for the past nine months is to just suck itup and keep working. Long after everyone else is asleep, I’ve stayed up tokeep working on Go2 and Farmdog. Unfortunately, as Dan Benjamin recently saidon Back to Work, you can’t start a successfulbusiness part time. It needs your full attention, you need to be committed toit.
Farmdog Software has been my dream for a long time. Since first working withmy mentor back in England, and learning how he started a successful consultingbusiness, I’ve wanted to work for myself. I’ve been dreaming of working out ofmy home for twelve years, and my hope with Farmdog was that it would be thecatalyst that would finally help me achieve that dream. It has not. It isentirely my fault. I see where I’ve made mistakes, and how my timing wascompletely off. Underestimating how much time it would take to run thebusiness, and how much time it would take to go to grad school has left me mestressed, unhappy, and drained. My family, my boss, and I all deserve betterthan that.
Being stretched this thin caused the quality of my work to go down. The mostrecent build of Go2, 1.3, has glaring bugs that make it unusable for me. WhileI love my beta testers, and seriously can not thank them enough for findingthe faults in Go2, I can not, in good conscience, release 1.3 as it is. Itneeds a major reworking, and some serious thought into its direction and whatit does. I still use it every day at work to launch SSH sessions, which iswhat I built it for, but I need to think through what the best direction of itas a product is. It needs the kind of thought that I just don’t have theability to give it right now.
So, Go2 1.3 is not going to be submitted to the App Store. Farmdog Software isgoing on hiatus until I finish Grad School next year.
Farmdog has been an experiment of sorts, I wanted to see if I could do it, ifI could become an “indie developer”. I accomplished what I set out to do, butnot well, and not with the kind of dedication the endeavor deserved. As anexperiment, we will call Farmdog a success, and a proof of concept that, giventhe appropriate time and attention, Farmdog can lead to accomplishing my goal.However, right now is not the time. Right now is the time to concentrate onfinishing my Masters degree.
The Future
I have many ideas for apps, many that I’d love to start building right now,but they are going to have to wait. While Farmdog is going on hiatus, it isnot being abandoned. When I finish my Masters degree, I am going to returnto Cocoa with everything I can muster. I am going to leave Go2 in the AppStore, it generates one or two sales a week, and if people find it useful Isee no reason not to let them have it. So far support has not been an issue,but if it becomes one I’ll pull it. Farmdog is going to stay alive, simply ina holding pattern until I return.
I want to make clear how much I appreciate everyone who’s helped beta testGo2, and how much I appreciate the (very few) customers I’ve been lucky enoughto have. If you are one of the awesome few who’ve purchased Go2, I seriouslycan not thank you enough. You’ve helped make the experiment a success, andgiven me a direction for the future. If Go2 had not sold at all, or if it hadbeen given a bunch of negative reviews, I probably would have decided myfuture lay elsewhere.
For the CocoaHeads in Des Moines (and in Cupertino), thank you as well. It’sgreat to know that there’s a group of people in the area who are willing tohelp, and to share what they’ve learned.
As I write this, I feel relieved, but the real burden was lifted as soon as Imade the decision two days ago. As much as I like to think that I’m superman,I really have only a limited set of abilities, and something had to go.