Day 90: 90 Days

It’s officially over.

Many asked me at the beginning of this journey, “What happens on day 90?” The answer? Nothing. I chose the date simply because it’s when my lease ended, nothing more than that.

Even so, the person I was on day 1 is very different from the one I am today, and that’s all I could have asked for. I knew the decision would have more unknowns than I could count, but somehow there were even more unknowns than that. In fact, I don’t think the number of unknowns has really decreased over these 90 days; I’ve just learned how to function in their presence. I wake up fully aware that the path forward is foggy and still manage to go about my day.

I learned a lot about myself over these last few months. I learned how I’m susceptible to shiny object syndrome, how I work when no one’s watching, and how I’m deathly afraid of customer conversations. In seeing those weaknesses, I took steps to overcome them. I built WavePen with the specific goal that I wouldn’t abandon until it was truly finished. I tried many ways of holding myself accountable. And I finally started doing some customer conversations for SOTA Stream, which have gone well so far.

Looking back, did I make the right choice? Absolutely. Growth is when you can confidently say that your present self is doing better than your past self, and I’d like to think that statement applies to me. I can reflect on the position I was in 3 months ago and see the changes I’ve made for the better.

Still, I’m nowhere near where I thought I’d be by now. There’s a constant tension between my logical and emotional brain. The logical side knows that this path was never going to be easy, while the emotional part secretly wished that I’d already have a hyper successful project. The logical side knows that luck strikes those with the highest surface area for receiving it, while the emotional side had hoped my first launch would be all I needed to win.

I envisioned 90 Days would be a magical story of a guy who left his job and found his passion, like the many similar stories I’ve read. I even tried for the first month to paint each day in a new light, glorifying what was otherwise a mundane set of 24 hours. Slowly, the posts became more infrequent until I pretty much abandoned posting altogether. I even questioned whether I should write this final post—who’s even reading anymore? 90 Days paints a more realistic picture of what really happened. It’s not a stunning success or an abysmal failure, but rather something in between. Although I didn’t write as often as I planned to, I still amassed a small but loyal audience.

So what’s next? For me, it’s much of the same. I’ll continue work on my own projects and try to get them off the ground. 90 Days, as you probably noticed, will be on the backburner. I might share occasional updates every few weeks, but mostly I’ll be more active over on Twitter. I’m glad to have shared my journey with you all, and hope you’ll keep reading my stuff.

Thanks,
Jinay