Hey everyone, I’ve decided to make a very hard decision.
I’m putting Brane as a project on hold indefinitely.
As I’m sure most of you are aware, Brane has been a core part of my identity for nearly 5 years since I made the first commit in June of 2021.
But no matter how much I genuinely love this project and how much it defines who I am, I have to admit that in 4 years of development, I haven’t shipped anything, and I’ve had no impact on the VR industry through this project. I’ve gained a lot of personal experience, but neither the community nor I have really anything tangible to show for it yet.
For the past couple years I have felt very tired. I’ve had multiple startups, friendships, relationships, etc blow up despite putting in enough effort into them that it consistently affected my health. That it takes a toll on you, and at a certain point you learn to expect nothing for your efforts because it’s the only pattern that you’ve seen.
I want to make it clear I’m not giving up, I’m not someone who does that. I want to have a real, tangible impact on reality, both digitally and more importantly physically. This year so far has really inspired me to pick myself up and go do that. The world really needs people who go out and do things right now.
Why does that mean I need to pause Brane though? First and foremost, it’s because it’s splitting my attention. Right now I’m working with one of the best teams I’ve ever had, where instead of it feeling like I’m carrying everyone, instead I’m struggling to keep up with them, and it’s not fair to them to be spending my best neurons on a project that might help at some point, and is not the best fit for what we’re doing today, especially when time matters.
Secondly, would Brane actually have the impact that I want it to? There’s a real danger that it’s falling into the same trap that a lot of programmers fall into: “Solving an inherently social problem using technology”. My general strategy was just to make something so good that it would just become what everyone uses. Would that work? I still think it would, but it’s more likely not. Also how do I create something that good on my first attempt?
The Brane will return, but I’m not ready to make it yet. I have the hard technical skills, but for it to succeed there’s some more soft things I need to go acquire:
I need to go ship some successful pieces of software, learn what people want, how to make that for them, deliver it to them, have them care about it, and what the tech stack for doing that actually looks like once you start making it yourself.
I need a team that can fill in my blindspots, and that I know share the same vision and passion that I have. I’m really hoping that’s the team I’m with right now.
I need to learn how to both grow and manage a community, interact with people, and generally, I just need to learn how to function as a human, because I’ve been neglecting that for a long time.
Most importantly, I need to feel like I’ve succeeded at something, I’ve gone too long without something I’ve felt is a true win.
Thank you to everyone who has supported me on this journey, it has meant the world to me, and I hope this new phase of both my life and XR leads to the reality we all want.
