A short November update

It’s been a little over two months since my last post, and I’ve been feeling guilty about leaving this place kind of abandoned.

Since starting my new role as a software engineer at Collate back in September, I’ve barely had time to work on my own projects. The ramp-up was intense, and by mid-October, I finally started to feel like I was getting some of my time back. Of course, that meant putting everything else on hold.

I tried to continue the work I began after publishing my last post — the market research for my product idea — but I ran into some friction I hadn’t anticipated. That’s made progress slower than I expected.

Since I’m not sure when I’ll have results worth writing about for part three of my building in public journey, I thought I’d take a moment to journal and reflect on the past couple of months.

A lot of rethinking

One thing I’ve been doing a lot lately is reconsidering things.

Was taking this new role the right decision, knowing it would leave me with less time? Am I prioritizing what truly matters? Should I sacrifice a bit of health, sleep, and maybe even my relationship just to make room for my projects?

At the same time, I’ve been dealing with imposter syndrome. I keep second-guessing myself — wondering whether I’m really cut out for this, whether I’m actually good at what I do or write about.

Honestly, I’ve even caught myself thinking I’m just a snake oil salesman pretending to be something I’m not. At least for now. That’s why I still haven’t made this blog public.

At one point, I even removed all links to it from my LinkedIn and Instagram, because I didn’t want to come across as all smoke and mirrors.

Another thing that’s been occupying my mind is the realization that, although my new job gives me plenty of autonomy and real user contact, it doesn’t offer the early-stage environment I was hoping for.

That made me realize the only real way to get that experience in today’s market is to build my own thing — something I still struggle to prioritize enough.

Still, I’ve been pushing forward bit by bit — trying to make progress on my product idea despite the chaos.

The challenge in finding leads for my project

When I started looking for Ghost users to contact, I realized I had underestimated how hard it would be to build a database of people.

Finding Ghost-powered blogs was relatively easy — there are plenty of ways to detect them when crawling a site. You can even automate the extraction of stats like post counts, number of authors, and whether they offer paid subscriptions.

With a Python script, I managed to push a list of roughly 500 blogs to HubSpot (yes, I even set up a CRM) in half a day. But finding the people behind those blogs? That’s a completely different story.

The easiest cases were blogs where the author was clearly identifiable and listed a contact method on their page. The next best case was when they linked to social media or a personal website where I could find contact info. The worst cases, though, were those with nothing but a name — and not even one that showed up in Google results.

That might not sound terrible, but my goal was to reach out to 100 people to validate my idea with a decently sized audience — ideally sitting down with at least 10 of them.

So far, compiling a list of 30 potential contacts has taken me about 10 hours spread over a few days. It’s slow, and the slowness feels discouraging.

I’m now considering preparing my cold outreach strategy and reaching out to those I already have. That way, I can start having some conversations and learn what works (and what doesn’t) while continuing to expand my list.

On prospecting

When searching for blog contacts, I’ve also been trying to optimize how I spend my time. I prioritize blogs that meet the following criteria:

• Monetized blogs. Part of my hypothesis is that my ideal customer makes money from their Ghost content. So I’m starting with blogs that offer paid subscriptions.
• Few authors. Ghost users range from solo creators to large media outlets. I’m excluding the latter — even if they’re monetized — because many of their writers are freelancers who come and go. My guess is that these professionals are usually comfortable switching platforms, so a Ghost-specific tool wouldn’t bring them as much value. I’d rather focus on creators who use Ghost daily and are more likely to feel (and want to solve) the pain points I’m exploring.
• Active sites. I only consider blogs that are clearly maintained and publishing regularly. No point in pitching tools to a dormant site.
• Using the latest Ghost versions. There are two reasons for this. First, sites hosted on Ghost Cloud are typically up to date, which means they’re likely paying at least $11/month — an indicator of willingness to invest. Second, newer versions have APIs that make it easier to gather the info I need to classify blogs and test ideas for the MVP.

This has helped me narrow things down to what feels like a reasonable target market. I don’t want to niche further until I learn more.

But honestly, the real challenge has been accommodating the most recent change in my life.

A new job

When I started job hunting in June, I was looking for a place that valued product engineering — the kind of work I did at Tierra Labs: building features, measuring impact, testing hypotheses, and talking to users.

A recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn, and that’s how I met the team at Collate. After speaking with two of the founding engineers, it was clear they had the mindset I was looking for, even if their processes were different.

The opportunity itself was appealing too. I’d be working on a promising open-source project called OpenMetadata. If you work in data, you should definitely check it out — feel free to reach out to me about it.

To be honest, the first month was rough. The onboarding was demanding, the system was complex, and I was putting a lot of pressure on myself. I even started to wonder if I had made a mistake.

Part of the struggle was that, while I understood the product’s purpose, I didn’t feel connected to it. I haven’t worked in data long enough to truly empathize with its users.

Looking back, I switched jobs right when I was most motivated to work on my own projects. Suddenly having to slam the brakes and focus on something that didn’t fully excite me felt wrong.

But with a cooler head, I can now say I’m happy with where I am. The challenge is stimulating. I get to talk to users, offer support, and improve the software based on feedback. The role is highly autonomous, and I scope my own work for each release.

So, even if I didn’t get everything I was looking for, I did find a great place that gives me enough of what I wanted.

I must be honest though, it did come with a price attached to it, which brings me to my next point.

A constant feeling of dissatisfaction

My daily routine looks roughly like this:

Morning: Wake up around 7, take the dogs for a walk, feed them, have breakfast, and work until about 2 p.m. (or earlier if I need to cook).
Afternoon: Walk the dogs again, work from around 4 to 6 p.m., then feed them and head to the gym until 8.
Evening: After showering, I take the dogs out for their last walk — usually about an hour — have dinner, and by around 10 p.m., my day is over. Lately, that means sitting with my SO to talk or watch a show.

I can’t complain — my job is mentally demanding but not unbearable, and I love spending time with my dogs and my partner. But it’s nonstop until night, and by then, I just want to rest.

The problem? I keep beating myself up for not working harder — for not using my spare time to push my projects forward. But deep down, I know I don’t want to do that. I know what nonstop work does to my health.

So here I am: unwilling to deprioritize the things that matter most, still longing to build something meaningful of my own, and constantly feeling pressure to achieve more financially.

It’s like living in a constant state of dissatisfaction.

Take my new job — even though it’s a great opportunity and an upgrade, the excitement fades quickly when I realize my situation hasn’t really changed.

Buying a house? Still years away.
Saving for that? Then comes worrying about retirement.
And what happens once you factor in family?

I’m 30 now. Is it even realistic to build a secure future when you already feel behind?

Cheesus.

I love when my dad tells me I should just focus on the present and be happy — to trust that I’ll get there eventually. I believe him. I just wish it were that simple.

So that’s it from me for now. These are the things that have been keeping me busy lately — and the reasons I haven’t written much in the past few months.

Journaling about it helps. I tend to write the most when I’m feeling conflicted or restless. It’s the stick that drives me more than the carrot — frustration often gets me moving more than comfort does.

But don’t get the wrong idea — I have plenty of happy moments throughout the day. My dogs and my partner bring me a lot of joy, and working out keeps both my body and mind sane.

People often tell me I should worry less. They hear me talk about the things I’ve written here and assume I’m not doing well.

But really, I think it’s healthy to feel a bit of discomfort or stress about where you are in life from time to time. If we were always happy with our situation, we’d probably stop pushing forward.

Until next time,
E.