I underestimated how lonely building solo can be

The main thing I'm missing at the moment is learning by osmosis from people far more experienced than myself. Learning stuff that I didn't know I didn't know. Mentorship. Having said that, I wasn't getting this at the last place I worked so not much difference there...

Something I've been doing for general feedback is keeping my friends updated on what I'm up to. I'm continually surprised by how much of an interest friends and family take in the project I'm building, and by the quality of insights they give. There's a bit of a balance here though cause you don't want everyone you know to automatically bring up your work whenever you see them.

If you mean technical feedback then yeah not being surrounded by other engineers you can bounce ideas off kind of sucks...

Not sure how sporty you are but I have a pretty fixed weekly routine where I do sports with my friends some nights after "work" and I've found that great for forgetting about my project and pulling me away from the computer at a reasonable hour. For loneliness during the day I've found working somewhere busy helps. Libraries are my go-to. Maybe a nice way of framing it is that you can't get distracted by business analysts / product team people chit chatting all the time and constantly getting coffees and breaking your flow :)

I can relate, not sure what to do about it besides move to a hacker house in Thailand or such.

NPR's show 1A had a program on loneliness. There were a couple of interesting things: these days university cafeterias are quiet because everybody eats alone while looking at their phone. A Gen-Zer complained they 2 jobs and no time to socialize. On top of that, our third places are being ruined with hostile architecture (parks), or uncomfortable seating (Starbucks) because they want you to just do a mobile order and get out. Seems like the Internet should at least be a good third space, its called cyberspace after all, but at least idk how to get invited to the right discords or tiny social spaces where there's community.

I feel this. I think loneliness has been the principle feeling in my life forever, whether I'm with people very different to myself or like-minded. Lack of connection == lack of purpose, and that makes every action more difficult.

Piers Steel researches motivation and has a book called "The Procrastination Equation". In the book, motivation is modelled as Motivation = (Expectedness * Value) / (Impulse * Delay). In his academic papers, it's rendered as:

Utilityᵢ = (Eᵢ Vᵢ) / (Γᵢ D)

That is, the perceived utility of any action increases with the expectancy that one will be able to finish it, and the perceived value of the end result, and is reduced by a person's inclination to be impulsive or distracted and the end goal's distance from the present.

How can any action have utility if someone has no place in the world? As a social species, our purpose is largely defined socially. When you're going solo, it's hard to get a sense of value of a given action.

Hire an intern at minimum wage, theres a ton of ones from good schools that want to work at startups. hire two.

Curious why you are building?

nice job, man!