I’ve spent most of my free time over the last three weeks building a project called 1 Million Words. The code I started with as a basis for that was probably another two months of free time for me. I built, I tested and I iterated. I spent long hours debugging, and refining the experience based on feedback from beta users.

About 30 minutes ago I “launched” it on Product Hunt. Now comes the hard part: letting go.

Of course I want 1 Million Words to do well. I think it’s a cool idea that could help a lot of people. There’s definitely a chance it fails though. People may not “get” it. It may be too complicated, or the wrong product for the market. It may be the perfect product, but launched at the wrong time.

If it does well, great, but if it fails I need to have the dispasionate perseverence to keep building. I need to remind myself that what I learned from building this was worth the time I put it, and that I had fun writing the code and searching for the bugs. I’ve done all I can do, and now I need to let the market decide, and if the decision is that it fails, I need to build something that more people think are worth using. I’m prepared to do that, because building things is what I love. If the bitter moment comes in a few hours where I realize the launch has failed, I need to remember that.

Let’s go.