Thanks for this. I've brought projects through to the "crickets" stage. I've got another project now that I just realized is reaching the far shore of that pit despair (after 2-3 years of "I don't know WTF I'm doing and the more I read the more I realize I don't know in this subject I picked").

Not only does the technical merit of a project have little to do with whether it is successful, but also I think you "don't get to choose": my projects with the longest legacy (measured in the 10s of users) were not the ones I thought would be taken up.