The frustration of working alone!
Working alone is hard, I mean really hard and boring! It takes a good amount of courage to start a project of your own which isn’t part of your full time job and manage to squeeze time out to stay devoted!
All throughout my years of schooling and then a slow 4 years of engineering and managing to get into a good university for a masters, I had dreams and those dreams were often connected to projects. “Lets make a website, just like Facebook, were users can dislike each others post, its gonna be a huge hit!” then came the more sensible idea, “Lets make a hardware device that can be found from an app, so users can easily find things they often loose, keys! Everyone looses keys, its gonna be the best thing ever”.
I moved to Uppsala, Sweden to do my masters and a ball it was. The student life was unparalleled, there was always something to do always a party that was a block away. Turns out where there are a lot of students in one place, comes a lot of problems with it. A existing problem was bikes getting stolen, so me and my mates came up with another startup idea. “Lets make a GPS that somehow becomes one with the bike so young bikers, cyclists or students could easily find their lost property with the click of a button”. This was it! I found the perfect team, they were technology students and were competent with the things I didn’t know. We spoke to a professor who had a background in electronics, found that it was going to be feasible, battery life, low power GPS, even played around with the idea of having a grid like system throughout the city. Fast forward 1 month, we had all the tools to build out first prototype and then boom, the idea was dead just like that, (The number of times I saw that whatapp message read, but never replied to) everyone who was first involved got uninterested with the project, the chips we had ordered from ebay and whatnot were sitting there eating dust and loneliness.
I felt sick! How could such a ‘Dream team’ fall apart so quickly? A question I still wonder FYI. I was tired of coming up with projects, projects whose logos and name were decided first before a product ever existing and as it turned out never would exist.
*Cue in the rocky theme song*
Time to take matters into my own hands, I am going to do everything! I might not be capable of it, I might not be competent in everything, but the next project I ever think of making, make it I shall!
Here comes the masters thesis, an idea that wants to take healthcare data which is presumably open source to Help improve medical adherence using a smart watch in patients Not a catching name, yes! A good idea thought! Maybe! From prototype to my own lonely trello charts to actually programming the thing! It was great, I had full freedom and full control. Apart from the single “Open source health care data”clause, everything was perfect! Got an A, if you were wondering.
My next idea, an actual android app that will end up on the play store. An app that tells you to do something nice towards a stranger, something kind, kind to the planet and kind to nature. Trello (Check), prototype(Check), let the programming begin! This got boring very quickly, I ended up working after work and having little time to enjoying a night out with friends, cause every time I met my friends for a pint or two, I knew work was not being done. No one to fall back on, no one to bounce off ideas and no one to help me with the project. The material animation itself took a month or so, there were spans of days nothing happened, I got back to old habits, “Lets just make the logo today, lets just ponder names for the app” With a good amount of perseverance and a dwindling light of hope, I carried on! And there it was, I had a finished app! Now on the play store! Find it right here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.first.akashshrivastava.randomactofkindness
This was the best feeling, I started something myself and finished it myself. Needless to say, the app is by no means perfect or close to it, but its live! And no app crashes even!
This kinda became a thing! I loved the fact that no matter what the project is, If I start something, I will finish it. Here the thing, I am said to be a social person, someone who likes to talk, to listen and talk back! That becomes so hard when all you have is coffee and Android studio to give you company.
I am already near completion on my next app, but that one deserves a whole post on its own.
I love the idea of bouncing ideas back and fourth, you learn so much! You learn to get better, you learn the techniques to get better! I had no way to not get frustrated with the idea that, WHEN not if I hit up on a problem, I will have no one else but me to solve it with.
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