It’s been a while.
I haven't written here in a little while, and honestly, it isn't because I stopped building.
If anything, I've probably been building too much.
A lot has happened since my last proper journal entry. WishIT has kept moving. I've continued working on my open-source projects. NFSFU234FormValidation has been moving toward its next chapter. NFORSHIFU LOGICFORGE has started becoming something much more real than an idea in my head.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I stopped documenting the journey.
So, hello again.
I graduated.
This is probably the biggest thing I somehow failed to write about.
On July 26, I graduated.
After years of being a student, writing code between classes, working on projects, dealing with deadlines, building things that nobody asked me to build, and trying to figure out what I wanted my life to look like after university, that chapter finally ended.
I took pictures.
I celebrated.
I went through the whole experience.
And then somehow... I didn't write about it.
Which is funny because this blog exists almost entirely because I like documenting things.
I'll write more about graduation on August 26, exactly one month after it happened.
For now, I'll just say this:
It feels strange to close a chapter you've spent so many years inside.
WishIT is still here.
WishIT has been one of the longest-running experiments of my life.
It has survived rewrites, changes in direction, lost data, new features, periods where I thought I should abandon it, and periods where I became convinced I could make something much bigger out of it.
And it is still here.
More importantly, people are still finding it.
The numbers aren't some ridiculous startup success story. I'm not going to pretend they are.
But that's actually part of why I keep documenting it.
A product going from an idea on a screen to something that strangers actually use is still remarkable to me.
WishIT recently crossed 100 users, and the number has continued creeping upward.
Slowly.
Sometimes painfully slowly.
But upward.
And I'm learning that building something real is often less dramatic than the internet makes it look.
Sometimes growth looks like one new user.
Then another.
Then another.
NFORSHIFU LOGICFORGE is becoming real.
For a long time, NFORSHIFU LOGICFORGE was mostly a name attached to a vision.
Now I'm starting to see the beginnings of an actual company.
I've started putting people together.
We've had our first team meeting.
There are conversations happening that don't involve just me sitting alone with a laptop anymore.
That's a strange feeling.
For years, I've been used to being the developer, designer, product person, marketer, tester, project manager, and occasionally the person arguing with himself about whether a feature should even exist.
Now I'm beginning to learn what it means to build with other people.
That's a different kind of building.
And I'm still figuring it out.
I'm also learning that shipping isn't the same as building a company.
This might be one of the biggest things I've been thinking about lately.
I know how to build.
Give me an idea and enough time, and I'll probably make something.
I've done that over and over again.
But a company is different.
A company needs people.
It needs distribution.
It needs customers.
It needs systems.
It needs money.
It needs decisions that aren't always exciting.
And it needs focus.
That's something I'm learning the hard way.
There is always another thing I could build.
Another idea.
Another experiment.
Another repository.
Another product.
The harder question is:
What actually deserves my time?
I'm still learning how to answer that.
So, what now?
I don't have some perfectly written five-year plan.
I wish I did.
What I do have is a growing collection of things I care about, things I've built, people I want to build with, and problems I want to solve.
I have WishIT.
I have my open-source work.
I have NFORSHIFU LOGICFORGE.
I have ideas that haven't become products yet.
And I have a lot more questions than I did a year ago.
Maybe that's okay.
Because I think I've finally started understanding that the point of this journal isn't to come here only when I have a success story.
It's to document the process.
The confusing parts.
The small wins.
The things that don't work.
The moments where I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.
So this is me opening the journal again.
It's been a while.
A lot has happened.
And there's a lot more to build.
We're back.