The project failed for multiple reasons, perhaps all of which stemmed from a lack of drive to see it completed.

Eh, there you go, already off the hook and with the pre-made conclusion to avoid finding out too much or digging out too deep through an actual review. What do you imagine exactly this magical drive to be anyway?

Given how long this (incomplete) endeavor took in the end, it's amusing to read diana_coman refer to TheFleet as a small project. To excuse be fair to myself I was bussied with other tasks as I worked on TheFleet: building a computer, saltmines work, and writing a couple of articles a week.

Mk. Go through my blog from January to July (inclusive) this year and make a list with the stuff done and documented; as you might imagine, the blog is not even by far a complete image of what I do, but I won't even go there. Then tell me again how it is with this "bussied with other tasks" and such other ways to make sure you don't learn anything from it, will you?

You know, there *are* indeed clear reasons why it wasn't/isn't a small project *for you* but they all have to do with you, not with it! For one thing, you clearly got fully infected with the microsoftesque approach of making the speaking paper clip based on behavioural studies and whatnots because simply providing an actually useful set of hints or something would not *justify* spending that many resources nor be fuel enough for the *desired pretense* of importance and great achievement, sure. For mercifully keeping the rest short, especially once some trouble appeared, your focus was on avoiding & hiding it, not on any actual getting rid of it.

so it's better to stay goalless

How does this even follow? So you thought the goal was X and I pointed out that X is more wishful thinking than a goal, therefore the conclusion is ...it's better to not have a goal at all? Just how exactly do you jump like that?

No, it's not "better" to have no *aim* (if "goal" is already a charged word that drags in for you whatever prepackaged "thinking") but not everything and anything qualifies for a useful aim just like that by virtue of one being able to state it! Moreover, since you can't know the future but you have all the past and present available to look at in any detail, the way you may pick a "goal" is only by extrapolating it as a necessary consequence, not by stating it "because wouldn't that be great" or something.

I actually didn't even cancel my subscription for TheFleet servers until I wrote this article, so clearly I didn't really care about the money.

Right. Since you fail to even register the elephant in the room, I'll ask the question for you: what *did* you care about?

In this final article before TheFleet project was abandoned all together, I sidestepped the current goal of analyzing the data I had by saying I needed to fiddle with something else first.

If I hadn't canceled it, you'd be still sidestepping that and other issues with it, now and for as long as I let it go on, it's clear enough. Either you actually deal with a problem when it appears or you attempt to sidestep it and then gradually paint yourself in a corner as there are ever more things to sidestep.

I. Pick something I'm excited about.

Excitement is short-lived by definition. How do you think it will survive the first problems? This sort of "oh, if I'm excited about it then it will all go better" is the modern nonsense with "be passionate about what you do" and a lot of similar nonsense but it "works" in practice just as well as all the rest of wishful thinking - for as long as ~anything would have "worked" just the same ie when it doesn't matter anyway and at any rate for not all that long overall.

Pick something small enough and simple enough that you can get done quickly enough to keep you going, for starters. More importantly it would be to *stop pretending* but since you kept right at it even as I (and others, for that matter) pointed it out and even as it got you out of the project and so on, it's clearly very, very dear to you so it would take a lot to chip away at it.