Crosscut

Let's get right to the point: I'm quitting. I already came close last week, feeling overwhelmed by the challenges of working on Crosscut, and pessimistic about its outlook. I didn't do it then, because giving up on a long-term project due to a temporary mood would be stupid. But I'm doing it now. Because that mood, temporary as it was, brought something into focus that I can't ignore.

To work on something big and ambitious, I think you need a certain degree of blind optimism. Informed optimism just won't do it, if the project is too big to hold in your head all at once. So ambitious, that you can't even imagine all of the steps you still have to take.

And that little crisis of confidence, it shattered my blind optimism. Permanently, I believe. Because it reminded me that I have built my life around working on big and ambitious projects, and that (so far) none ever worked out. More importantly, it made me realize that while I've gotten much better at doing them, maybe that was the wrong lesson to learn.