Personal · · 1 min read
Notes from a summer of not shipping
On long projects, the middle stretch where nothing looks like progress, and the value of writing it down anyway.
The middle of a long project is where most of them die. Not at the start, which is exciting, and not at the end, which is at least visible — but in the stretch where the work is real and the evidence of it is not.
I have been in that stretch since roughly April.
What the middle looks like#
You fix the same class of bug three times in different clothes. You rewrite a system you were proud of six weeks ago. Nothing you do produces a screenshot worth showing anyone, which means nobody asks how it is going, which means you stop telling anyone, which is where projects quietly end.
Writing as a progress bar#
The devlog is not marketing. It is the only artefact the middle produces reliably.
- A post forces a decision to be stated, which forces it to be finished.
- Six months of posts is a record you can read backwards when you lose the thread.
- Explaining a system to a stranger is the cheapest design review available.
That is most of why this blog exists — a place to put game design notes, app work and everything else in one archive rather than three abandoned ones.