Being early sounds romantic when people say it fast. In reality it feels more like standing in a room that hasn’t decided what it’s for yet. With Plasma XPL there are days I tell myself we’re early, patient, positioned well. Other days that same thought twists into something colder. What if we’re not early. What if we’re just wrong in a very quiet way.
That tension sits in the background all the time. Not loud enough to panic, not soft enough to ignore. You see other projects move faster, collect signals, numbers, proof. Plasma XPL moves differently, slower, sideways sometimes. I try not to compare, but comparison sneaks in anyway, usually late at night when confidence is tired.
Being early means living without confirmation. You act on assumptions that haven’t been validated yet. That’s harder than it sounds. It’s more like stubborn curiosity mixed with doubt. I don’t wake up convinced. I wake up willing to test the belief one more day.
What makes it heavier is that being wrong wouldn’t explode dramatically. It would fade. No headline. Just silence growing over time. That thought used to scare me. Now it feels like part of the cost. Plasma XPL isn’t protected from irrelevance just because I care about it.
Not hype. A pattern maybe. Small signals that don’t translate well into tweets. Conversations that linger. Decisions that feel right even when they’re uncomfortable. Those don’t prove anything, but they anchor me.
I’ve learned that being early and being wrong feel almost identical from the inside. The difference only shows up later, in hindsight, when it’s too easy to rewrite the story. For now all I can do is stay honest about the doubt and still choose to build.
Plasma XPL exists in that narrow space. Between belief and hesitation. It’s not heroic. It’s human. And for now, that’s enough to keep going.
