One of the most exciting times as a maker of things is the waiting between the time you finish making something you are genuinely proud of and the time the world will get to see it.
The confidence in your craft tells you this is so good. Because you know what good looks like. You know this is a banger. How could it not be. It is. You wait.
But this couples up with a maddening anxiety on how the world will actually react. Which you can’t know until it’s out. You wonder if it will make people feel how it felt to you. Especially for things which start feeling too personal. You intellectually know the outcome is influenced by so many things you can’t control. Maybe the Internet has a different mood on that day. Maybe the world has more important or interesting or whatever else thing going on. Maybe the world doesn’t care about the thing you care about the most. Maybe maybe maybe. Or maybe you are actually delusional. Maybe you have lost the edge. Maybe your good isn’t that good anymore. You simply can’t know. You wait.
And in that waiting, you wonder about all the little choices you made. All the darlings you killed to arrive at this specific shape. You obsess. You stare at it. To hunt for the roughness you simply missed. You think of all things you could have done but you didn’t. Because you know you have to ship. And you don’t want the anxiety to overrule the need to ship. You have to. You wait.
Then you feel excited again. And the dance continues. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve been there. In this exact situation. In the middle of this waiting. Deep in the crater of the anxiety that doesn’t go away. Of knowing that maybe one shouldn’t feel too much. Or be too attached to your creation. Because what if you are genuinely deluded? What if you are setting up your masoom heart to break? What if you end up making a fool of yourself? You don’t know. You can’t know. You wait.
And then you ship. Whatever happens, happens. It’s a phase. Until you find the new thing to make. And you just feel grateful that you get to make. Becaue the joy is in the making. And joy is the point of it all.