My ultimate dream is to create all of my own software to do what I do currently; that is, make fonts, animations, and software. Now that’s obviously quite ambitious and it would take several years of hard work to get to that point.

The ultimate motivation to work on a project comes when the pain of that project not existing is greater than the pain of bringing it to life (or the pain of using what already exists). That’s a hard ask when what already exists is “just good enough”.

And it’s also a hard ask when the basis of a project’s purpose is preparing for something that won’t be relevant until far in the future. A particular category of these kinds of projects would be anything related to data preservation. With data preservation and archival stuff the whole premise has nothing to do with today, but has everything to do with things that could happen in the future. Perhaps this is why selling proactive solutions are borderline impossible.

Then there’s the relationship between the existence of a project and yourself. It’s extremely difficult to be motivated when a project isn’t really something you make use of yourself (which can arise because you make something with the expectation that others will use it).

When it comes to my dream ecosystem, I very much know I’ll make complete use of it myself, and I’m already sold on the (hypothetical) potential proactiveness of it.

But I’m finding it’s still not enough.

I often get mad at the way computers work today. Frankly, computers are horrible. They don’t have to be, yet here we are. And one would think that it would be enough motivation to create a new ecosystem that’s less horrible. However, they are just barely good enough that I can do everything that I want to do. I have all the software I need to make fonts, animations, and software today.

And that might be the problem.

I absolutely still believe in trying what software is already out there to accomplish your goals, because you’ll understand what the state of the art is, and where there are opportunities for improvement. You’ll also find features you didn’t know about that people need.

But I find myself largely creatively satisfied with the software I’m currently using today. The amount of times I wish I had my own software is frequent enough where making my own software would be worth it, but infrequent enough where I don’t have sufficient motivation.

I have been technologically spoiled. We might think of being spoiled as in being rich, having everything done for us, blah blah blah. I’m starting to think that I’ve been spoiled with “good enough” software, and it’s keeping me from making truly great software.

So what am I going to do? I’m going to stop using my main computer, possibly even sell it off. I’ll starve myself of at least some of my hobbies (I may continue to do animations). If I want to get back to my hobbies, I have to work my way to getting them back. When I stop making, I feel dead. When I got one of my first jobs years ago I felt this. Could I use this “creative death” as a motivator?