SuperYesMore just underwent a major upgrade. It took me six weeks to update the website. Six weeks is a very long time by common standards for a project to remain idle in a buzzing environment where the slightest change is too often a good reason for yet another newsletter.

For once, I decided that my projects, my work, should revolve around me. Not the other way around.

During those six weeks, I’ve been taking the time to live my personal life and make sure that it was my main preoccupation, and that my projects were smoothly integrating into my existence instead of dictating how I should run it. For once, I decided that my projects, my work, should revolve around me. Not the other way around.

Over the last six weeks, I’ve had to live with all the issues I discovered after the launch and the first wave of users and “emergency fixes” (which essentially took place in January and early February 2016). For six long weeks, all the more serious problems I had noticed (the kinds that require thoughtful consideration and a lot of work) remained live, in production, and... unfixed.

Bugs I could barely understand. Design issues. Unpleasant UX choices. Neglected accessibility. Errors triggered when technically everything was going right. Weak responsiveness. You name it, you got it.

And yet, I took the time to be with my kids, swim, cook, meet with friends, go out. In spite of all those issues which were literally harassing me mentally, screaming in my head that I should fix them right away, in spite of the fact that users were fleeing because my projects were poorly coded, looked bad, and just plain sucked, in spite of all the unpleasantness of feeling judged by an abstract, demanding, sarcastic crowd, I took the time to live a full life.

And it was an extremely stressful experience

As a developer and an entrepreneur, taking time for yourself and the people around you when your projects call for your attention has certain implications in terms of anxiety. Paradoxically, spending an evening with friends instead of developing SuperYesMore and fixing bugs created a lot more stress than spending a night ingesting caffeine alone at my desk, improving my code, and deploying minor patches.

This state of things, this “increase in stress in the middle of good moments,” obviously has to do with the impression that users are hitting your app, stumbling into bugs, and fleeing in anger, never to return. Every minute you spend doing things that are not dedicated to improving your app is a minute you have to live with the idea that you look unprofessional.

An amateur. Someone who’s not committed to the cause. Who’ll never make it.

What. An. Unpleasant. Feeling.

I haven’t reached that level of wisdom where I can forgive myself for not releasing something perfect. I haven’t reached that level of success where I can hire as many people as I need to solve my technical problems while I enjoy the luxury of focusing on myself. Working on my own projects still implies that I’m walking along a binary, “either/or” path: either I go swimming or I fix bugs.

I can take my body to the swimming pool instead of commanding it to sit for one more hour in front of a computer. That I can do.

I came to accept that the feeling of being “judged by the cloud” (and its invisible, mentally noisy crowd) is inevitable. I don’t even waste time trying to convince myself that it’s just in my head. In fact, I really think that the cloud is continually throwing its latent, nagging judgment at pretty much anything and everything that crosses its path. Like a huge, insatiable beast. (If Twitter rooted one feeling in me, it’s that one.)

But I decided to live with this constant unpleasantness of my apps raising cynical comments, whether voiced or not. That I can do. I can take my body to the swimming pool instead of commanding it to sit for one more hour in front of a computer. That I can do.

Your project is going to be discovered time and time again over the course of its development

During those six weeks, two very important considerations gradually emerged in my thinking:

Your project is going to be discovered at one point in time by a certain person, and at another point in time by another person.

Your project is going to be rediscovered by the same person many times, at various points in time.

I came to understand that no matter how much pressure the imperfections of my projects put on my shoulders, I have time.

These thoughts helped me tremendously to deal with the stress caused by my decision not to bury myself in work (note the paradox, again). For six weeks, some bugs and UX choices might have been to the users whose paths they crossed what garlic is to vampires. But I’m sure that those users will come back to SuperYesMore one day or another. They’ll come across a link somewhere on a blog or on Twitter. And when they’re back, they’ll notice that things have been improved around here. Their first impression may not be dispelled right away. That’s fine. They’ll come across another link somewhere else. And they’ll come back again. And gradually the quality of my work will make itself known and replace their initial perception. It’s just a matter of time.

The users who discover SuperYesMore in its later, more mature embodiments will not be aware of the previous versions and their quirks. And, mind you, it’s a big deal, because as time elapses, more material is posted, and more users are discovering my app, and it’s getting better and better. Here too it’s a matter of time.

I came to understand that no matter how much pressure the imperfections of my projects put on my shoulders, I have time.

I’ve never been as serious as about a project as I am about SuperYesMore, and yet I’ve never lived a fuller life than the one I’ve been enjoying since the beginning of 2016.

SuperYesMore is going to be discovered time and time again over the course of its development. That’s so reassuring. There’s room for me to exist in between each deployment.