It’s not the waiting. It’s the not knowing.

Sometimes I sit here and worry about how slowly everything is moving.

When will something start to feel like it’s working? When will the effort stop feeling like it’s disappearing into thin air? For a while, I attributed this anxiety to a lack of patience. I told myself I just needed to get better at “delayed gratification.”

But I’ve realized that delayed gratification isn’t the problem. I don’t mind the wait. What I struggle with is the uncertainty.

The real challenge isn’t waiting for a payoff; it’s continuing to do the work when you don’t know where it leads. It’s moving forward without the comfort of reassurance.

Uncertainty used to paralyze me. I needed clarity, direction, and a solid outcome to hold onto before I could justify the effort. I’m not perfect at managing it now, but I am getting better. I’ve started to see that doubt isn’t a personal flaw - it’s more like a weather pattern. You can’t stop it from raining, but you can stop expecting the rain to mean the world is ending. It’s a temporary state, not a permanent verdict.

What has changed is that doubt no longer stops me the way it used to. It’s still there, but it has lost a bit of its power.

Since I stepped away from my job, I’ve kept a safety net in the back of my mind: If this doesn’t work, I can always go back. I told myself this to stay calm. But recently, a different thought surfaced.

For the first time, the “plan B” wasn’t just about returning to what I knew out of defeat. It was the realization that if this specific project fails, I would rather try to build something else than simply retreat. Not out of panic, but out of possibility. If this fails, I don’t necessarily want to go back to the way things were - I want the chance to try again.

It surprised me how comforting that felt.

I’m not claiming a destination yet. I don’t know what this makes me. But I’ve noticed that I just like building things. I like starting from nothing and figuring it out as I go. I used to think that impulse was impractical, reserved for people with massive safety nets or a very specific kind of confidence. I never thought of it as something you could simply choose.

But you can. Some people self-fund. Some raise money. Some fail and start over. None of it is guaranteed, and it never was.

I don’t know if this specific path will work. But I know I’m willing to keep trying - and that feels new.