After working on personal development for a while, Lily suddenly realized something: she hadn't spoken to anyone in weeks. Even after releasing her work, the response was zero. When she got stuck during development, there was no one to consult. Her open Slack channel only showed her own posts. Even though she knew this was normal, when writing code alone late at night, she could hear a distant voice asking, "Does this time even matter?"
This article is not about technology. It's an honest account of how Lily, a solo developer, has faced loneliness. It's not just success stories—it includes periods when she completely lost motivation, embarrassing failures, all left as they were. If you're also building something alone, I'd be happy if you felt, "Oh, I had a period like that too."
The loneliness hasn't completely disappeared. Even now, there are times when I think, "I wish I could talk about this with someone." But since I stopped fighting the loneliness, I've been able to continue a little more easily. I'll write about what I've learned in that process, as honestly as I can.
I'll be honest: on the day I first released my product, Lily put in quite a bit of effort. I rewrote the announcement text multiple times, timed it carefully, and posted it believing, "This will reach people."
The result was zero likes. Three page views. Probably all from me.
I can talk about it with a slight laugh now, but back then I was really discouraged. The fact that something I'd spent over a month creating went unnoticed by anyone hit harder than I expected. I started thinking, "Maybe there's no demand for what I create in the first place," and development came to a halt for a while.
After that, I did other things for about two weeks, and once my mood settled, I looked back. Then I gradually began to see "why it didn't reach anyone." The announcement text was weak. It didn't convey what problem the tool solved at all. Who it was aimed at was also vague.
In other words, it was less a problem with the product itself and more a problem with "how I delivered it." Understanding that helped me escape the assumption that "it has no value." But it took two weeks of solo thinking to reach that realization. If someone had been beside me, I might have recovered faster. When you're hurt in solitude, recovery takes time too. That was the first experience that made me really understand that.
If asked what's the hardest part of solo development, Lily would answer: "Having no one to consult when you get stuck." Sure, setting your own deadlines is tough, and the uncertainty of whether it'll make money is difficult. But what's more quietly painful is having to make every decision alone.
Technical roadblocks are still manageable. Many answers can be found through research, and you can ask communities. But directional problems are different. "Is there a point in continuing this?" "Does it resonate with users?" "Is the UI flow really intuitive?"—these kinds of questions are hard to answer without talking to someone. But there's no one to talk to.
Lily experienced a real failure: she continued developing for three months without showing the direction to almost anyone. It felt like steady progress in her mind. When she finally showed it to an acquaintance near completion, they said, "Doesn't this already exist?" She wasn't unaware of competitors, but had a bias that "mine is different" and hadn't researched properly. Three months of motivation collapsed in an instant.
A single person's perspective is narrower than you think. This isn't a matter of ability—it's structural. In an environment without external feedback, it's hard to notice your own cognitive distortions. The scariness of loneliness isn't just the emotion of "loneliness"—there's also the real harm of "not being able to notice biased judgment." This experience made me truly feel that.
With no response, no one to consult, and eventually I arrived at the answer: "I should join a community." Lily did the same. I joined several Discord servers and online communities.
But it didn't go well at first.
I couldn't grasp the community atmosphere and couldn't read the timing of posts. I wasn't sure if I should post my product, what tone to use. Seeing other people's posts like "Released!" and "Users are growing!" made me think they were amazing, but I felt anxiety and a gap somewhere. Trying to eliminate loneliness actually increased self-loathing—a rather ironic state.
Around the point where I started thinking, "Is it also a problem that I can't even fit into the community?" I paused. And I fundamentally changed how I engaged.
I let go of all the expectations: "Get recognized here," "Make friends," "Get approval." I shifted to a stance of "just watching is fine," "reading and realizing that others worry about the same things is enough."
That made things much easier. Instead of using the community as "a place to eliminate loneliness," I started using it as "a place to confirm that people in the same situation exist." That alone had more effect than I expected.
Rather than seeking external responses, "creating a small feedback loop inside myself" is more stable for sustaining solo development. That's Lily's current conclusion.
There are specific things I do.
First, I keep a work log. Not every day. "What I did today," "where I got stuck and how I overcame it"—even five lines is fine. When I read it back later, I can objectively see, "Yes, I was making progress." Even without external response, the facts I recorded don't disappear. That becomes quiet support.
Next, I write a "reflection memo" once a week. What I accomplished, what I didn't, what's on my mind now. I don't need to show it to anyone or make it public. Writing it as a dialogue with myself, I can step back a bit and think, "Oh, that's what this week was like." When you only think in your head, you tend to go in circles. Once you put it into words, you can move forward a little.
Also, I started making "working things" quickly instead of waiting for completion. Even at stages I don't show anyone, when something I created moves on the screen, there's a "yes" feeling. I use that small sense of accomplishment as fuel for the next step. This is currently the easiest system to sustain.
The fear of putting your work out there and the feeling of loneliness are surprisingly intertwined. When there's a premonition that "no one will respond anyway," the act of releasing itself becomes tedious. You don't release, so there's no response. That cycle repeats, and you become increasingly inward-focused.
What Lily consciously did to break out of that was to adopt a stance of "releasing as a record" before "releasing to reach people."
It doesn't need to go viral. It doesn't need to flow through someone's timeline. "At this point, I was creating this"—just place that fact on the internet. Make that the only purpose. With that mindset, the hurdle to releasing lowered.
Plus, a post with zero response sometimes gets read by someone six months later. Sometimes people say, "I read that back then." Just because there was no immediate response doesn't mean "no one saw it." There's just a time lag, and things accumulate. Once I could really feel that, I shifted my focus from worrying about responses while posting to continuing to post.
Current Lily doesn't treat loneliness as "a problem to solve." The loneliness of working alone probably never completely disappears. But since I stopped fighting it, the way I burn out has changed.
When I treated loneliness as a "problem," I was chased by self-imposed obligations: "I have to join a community," "I have to share," "I have to get recognized by someone." The energy spent trying to fill the loneliness was greater than the energy for development. That itself was quite draining, I think.
Now, the act of creating itself is reason enough for me. If it reaches someone, that's a happy bonus. Even if it doesn't reach anyone, the thing I made exists on the screen. With just that fact, I feel I can keep going.
To you developing alone: feeling lonely is not weakness or failure. It's just the natural result of that situation. The loneliness might not disappear, but you can continue while lonely. Lily is slowly realizing that. She's still creating.
Lily (@bokuwalily) — Solo developer. Creating iOS apps and web services in tandem with AI.
