I’ve been indie for about four years now. I wouldn’t trade it for anything else, but it does come with its own kind of hell. The lack of security and the fear that everything could disappear overnight is always there. Some days feel euphoric, and some days everything feels dark.

At one point I even built a live sales dashboard[1] to keep my dopamine in check, but a year later I realized it was a mistake. It started shaping my motivation instead of supporting it.

I guess the main lesson is that the ups and downs are normal, and you get better at riding them over the years.

[1]: https://x.com/kushsolitary/status/1777306909344715158

As someone on a similar journey, I've found doing open source work on fundamental projects really helps with the feeling of being alone.

I’m here doing it too. It has been 2 years, I can’t believe it. I am thankful for the immense amount of learning I never would’ve done working in a more secure gig (in my market anyway.)

I've been on that path since 2019. It's super challenging but so rewarding. Building your own universe, working your own way with total freedom and constraints.

I'm proud of all I've built and shared so far. But I still can't leave my day job. So at this point it's still 40/60.

At work, management asked if I'm willing to come back full-time and take over the team's leadership. No way. It's a costly game to play (huge opportunity cost), but the freedom is so valuable.

The peaks are glorious, the troughs are horrible.

Couldn't have summarized it better

This feels familiar.. I've been on the solo indie track ever since 2020 when society decided to turn hostile. Now 5 years later I'm definitely in some deep uncharted territory. The loneliness was very bothersome, but over time it becomes quite liberating, like a hermit it frees you to discover the deeper things in life.

The work can be insane and makes you question why anyone would be mad enough to forgo the easy path for this. The freedom is just way too good though. Often I'm not exactly sure what weekday it is. When I want to go on a vacation I usually decide that 1-3 days ahead and just go somewhere. Silksong was great too. There's absolutely nothing better. Thinking about a 9-5 office job now fills me with pure dread, I think it would break my soul.

Good luck, you should try to scale up the business and get 2-3 regular contractors (artists, designers, marketing folks) so you have somewhat of a team going. It helps when you have people on a project to throw the ball back and forth a bit.

Just regret waiting until I was 35 to attempt it and now I'm already going on 40. Wasted good years on easy mode.

edit:

But this part is wild to me: "I use AI for some things. It helped me fix a few bugs a couple of times"

I can't imagine being solo indie and not leaning hard into Codex, CC, or Composer at this point. To use it only sometimes for the rare bug or copy editing sounds tragic. It's been an incredible boon for me at least - extending, refactoring, prototyping etc. within a complex codebase I wrote myself and in new ones that I guide it on.

> It’s especially bad with new APIs.

It's great if you give it the context

Haha, same

Sounds about right for someone who is building on their own.