This Is the Worst

My mental state lately is truly the worst. When stress piles up I tend to dream about fighting a lot, and yesterday I spent the whole day in hand-to-hand combat. That's how irritated, anxious, and tense I am. From the moment I passed the 150 subscribers needed to move to Crowd Supply's launch stage, it's felt like some timer started running in my head. I have to handle everything as fast as possible. Crowd Supply seems to be easing back into work now that the Teardown conference is over. In the meantime I'd prepared the materials and drafts for the launch, and yesterday I got the detailed guidance.

Starting with the various certifications for selling electronics globally, then re-quoting with tariffs and fees included, then reviewing every option for production and for shipping to the Crowd Supply warehouse. My head is killing me. What's more frustrating is that I can't control any of it. I ask the other party about everything, and until a reply comes I have to wait with the uncertainty just sitting there. It's driving me mad.

I honestly don't understand how anyone manages and bears all of this alone. I've got AI's help and I'm working through it step by step, but the people before that? How they did it is genuinely worthy of respect. If I could go back a few months, I'd want to talk myself out of crowdfunding altogether. I wonder how it would have been to focus on the open source instead, on building it as a community. Not that I'm neglecting that part. I'm doing both at once. Whether I'm doing it well, I don't know.

The community does feel like it's growing bit by bit, but just as much, countless things needing improvement keep appearing. And parts of the communication have started to feel quite inefficient. How to improve that, I don't know yet. I've added a small test feature to the community page on the site. But whether to tell people about the feature I made or not, well, I'm not telling them. Probably because I'm afraid. Out of anxiety about whether it'll work properly, I'd rather not announce it, so I can take comfort in it obviously not working out.

Even if the funding launches successfully and there are plenty of buyers, I won't make money from it. Running the numbers makes that much clearer. Including the factors I haven't accounted for yet, even the currently planned $199 could be cutting it close. I could just set the price high, but the things I've told people before make me resistant to that. And I'm not sure whether it's right to sell something for several times the price when you could build it yourself for $100. Factoring in the setup, effort, and time it takes to make, is it a fair return?

I was also selected for the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture's arts startup incubating program. I'd wanted to take the 3 million won grant and use it for prototype production and testing costs, but I got an answer that it isn't possible. Apparently the support only covers transactions with domestic businesses. It seems to be because overseas parties can't issue tax invoices. So where on earth should this 3 million go? Should I just burn all of it on CE and FCC certification? But I don't have a feel for the quotes yet, so even that's murky. I looked into other arts startup support programs, and their usage restrictions are even more specific. In most cases I can't use it the way I want. Money's tight enough that I'm getting by on school cafeteria food for every meal, so spending my own on anything is hard. I also have to think about whether to stay enrolled for the second semester. Part of me wants to just take a leave of absence, but if it's possible, doing both is better. I think I'll decide this based on how hard the crowdfunding launch prep gets. At the level I'm feeling now, absolutely impossible.

What is there to do apart from the Crowd Supply funding prep? First, I have to update the materials in the README. All the screenshots and photos need swapping to the latest version. The photos of the Patternflow device especially, since they were shot on a phone in the very early days, absolutely have to be redone. So I'm on my way back from borrowing a camera and testing it. It looks hard to capture the feel of the LEDs, though. ISO, shutter speed, all of it… it's my first time using a proper camera at all, and it was difficult. Still, I'd rather do it myself than ask someone else to.

Activating the community really matters too. Honestly, the biggest resource I have is the community. If I just set up an environment where they can help, they're people who would help as much as you like. But even that small ask is hard for me, and I have no idea how to lay the board out. If anything, when they bring something to me, I seem to feel burdened. If they fail, I even feel guilty. I know there's not a single reason to, and still I can't help it. It feels like the people who've kept showing interest and sharing the project, the ones I've thanked, will turn on me over a single failure and hold it against me. I hope I can work through that, through the Patternflow project.