This isn't just the reality of software life. It's the reality of any career whatsoever. Most organizational endeavors fail. Just to give you a quick rundown of all the different things I've done as an adult:

- Helped open one of the original stores in Downtown Disney as inventory manager. Company no longer exists.

- Helped open one of the first Great Indoors, an attempt by Sears to get more serious into furniture and interior decorating. Company no longer exists.

- Director of Development at a youth mentoring nonprofit. The grant that funded my position was canceled after six months and I was gone.

- Performer at Disneyland. By far the most fun I've ever had at a job. I had honest to god groupies who bought annual passes and followed me around and stalked me. But Disney Parks had serious cutbacks after 9/11 and that included me.

- Army officer during Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. You think it's disappointing to see a product not launch? Try training up a foreign government for 20 years only to see the Taliban sweep in and kill everyone the minute you leave.

- Software responsible for the initial ground processing of all US spy satellite collections. One of the most successful and longest-running programs in the entire government, staffed by passionate domain experts who have often held the same job for decades. I can't really tell you jack shit about it, but I'll say I've seen some stuff not many get to see and I sleep much better at night having been able to get information raw rather than filtered through a scare-mongering public media that largely doesn't know what it's talking about.

I currently still work on military software projects, but at this point strictly unclassified because I like to work from home. Some projects have failed, some have not, some management has been short-sighted shitheads that sabotaged what could have been great, some have been legitimate visionaries that have pushed through real change and innovation that the military and government in general badly needs, pulling Congress behind them kicking and screaming. It's not Facebook pay, but I'm still making six times what I made working in any other industry I've been in. Software is by far the most rewarding thing I've ever done. I haven't ever had to bail a subordinate out of prison at 1 AM on a Sunday morning for hitting his wife. I haven't had to find a room to quarantine someone in for a week while an investigation takes place. I've never had a direct report shoot himself in the face two days before returning from overseas. I've never been forced to fire a woman I knew was innocent, also pregnant, and likely to end up on the street, but the owner didn't care. All things I've had to do in other jobs.

Should you go indy? I can't advise you there. I would never even try, personally. I'm far more risk averse now than when I was younger. I'm sure my dad didn't love waking up at 3 AM to go literally wade through shit as an LA County Parks and Rec plumber for 40 years, but he did it anyway and I had a stable and predictable childhood and grew up secure and safe because he did that. I'll never scoff at building anything at all that sells even a dollar, but just be aware that $600 MRR is about half what I get from VA disability for having ten screws in my spine, and that's tax-exempt. It's not something you can live on.

Assuming the checks never bounced, it seems to me like you ultimately came out ahead from every single one of these jobs. One more day you stayed alive, paid all your bills, and one day closer to retirement. It's a grind, but man, you could have been a slave, you could have been a concentration camp victim, you could have been a coal miner, you could have been a child during a cholera outbreak, you could have been a native when the Spanish first came to the Americas, you could have been any animal other than a human that lives for maybe a few months before getting ripped to shreds by a bigger animal or starving to death. Every single one of us here got one of the greatest deals any sentient creature has ever gotten. We're the lucky ones.