Shipping slow as an indie parent

Being an indie parent means we could never ship as fast as we expect ourselves to. This gets especially hard when you see other indies shipping their MVP in a weekend. Not withstanding they might be senior software engineers in their day job before, or have honed their coding skills and tech stack to the point that they can do that.

But assuming all things being equal, there’s just no way for an indie parent to catch up, let’s be honest.

And it’s frustrating sometimes.

Because to compare is human. I want to acknowledge that inevitable aspect of life, not just on Twitter but in real life, even while I understand that comparison is the thief of joy. I don’t want to make excuses for myself, but I also don’t want to be unkind to myself either.

Sometimes I wish I can hear more from indie parents struggling to ship, yet shipping anyway.

Maybe it took them 10x longer.
Maybe they had to sacrifice their sanity and sleep more than they would like.
Maybe they never thought they could make it to the finish line.

But they did it, and that to me is more inspiring than hearing from the outliers.

As it is, being a parent is one of the hardest jobs in the world already. We don’t need to feel worse for not being able to live up to our expectations of ourselves outside of that.

Let’s normalise shipping slow, even while we want to ship fast. Let’s affirm, but not make it an excuse.