Present vs Future: A Founder's Raw Update (and Why I Lost All My Code)
Hi, everyone! I hope you all are gearing up for the end of the year. As of this update, we have 26 days left in 2024.
Most years, I tend to do some kind of retrospective and planning for the year to come. If you've been following along, you know that I've been really focused on one thing: presence.
In doing so, I've been rejecting my old habit of thinking too far into the future and daydreaming about "what could be." This is true of PresentSelf AI, my job, and really most aspects of life. Instead, I've been really focused on what's in front of me, fully experiencing the range of emotions that come with today.
So, how does one think about and plan for the future while remaining present?
I don't have a good answer, but one thing I'm starting to grasp is that I don't need to "deposit" my current happiness within my future plans.
It's so easy to say, "Once I achieve this future goal, then I'll be happy." This is actually the fundamental principle of how many people plan. They delay feeling content/happy/satisfied to some distant moment in the future.
What if you can be fully content, satisfied, and grateful in the now and yet fully expectant of more in the future?
I'm not sure what it actually looks like to embody this idea, but I'm doing my damn best.
[Emotional State]
If I'm being honest, it's been a STRUGGLE the last several days building PresentSelf. I switched over from Claude to Cursor because I read this tweet thread about how much easier it is to code because Cursor can make real changes within your code files.
This is true, but it's a two-edged sword. Because Cursor has file control, it deleted some critical source code which set me back quite several days. I've not been able to successfully build the app in xCode in a few days, which is making me extremely nervous.
[Techinical State]
The nervousness brings me to the technical state of things.
In losing that source code earlier this week, I've basically been forced to refactor the entire app. I hope it's one of those things in a couple of weeks where I look back and think, "I'm lowkey glad it happened." But right now, it's the pits.
I addition to several days of rewriting the app, Cursor has been unresponsive for the last couple of hours. This is extremely concerning in that I don't really have another way to code it. Maybe I can try a different AI IDE?
I've mostly been working on getting Test Flight ready so that people can actually try out PresentSelf. I know it's not supposed to be easy, but really didn't expect it to take this long lol.
[Growth State]
I have not been able to spend enough time on growth/marketing with all the produce issues I've been facing.
I'm not sure if it's the lack of time to work on it or what, but I've been feeling a bit down about growth. I am feeling a lot of self-doubt about whether or not I have the growth chops to gain attention for this thing. This is really weird because it's one of the only things that I feel really deserves any attention.
I think I just need to get more practice and swings at bat.