There’s a special kind of courage required to test something unfinished.
I learned that the night my hosts and the other Workawayers were invited to dinner at my neighbour’s house. I saw it immediately –not just as a social gathering, but as an opportunity. This would be the perfect moment to test Beta Version 1 of my message card game.
So I prepared.
I wrote messages on enough playing cards to hand out to everyone at the dinner party. Careful words. Thoughtful prompts. Something designed to spark connection, reflection, maybe even a little wonder. After dinner, I introduced the game. Explained the rules. We picked our cards unseen.
Then we scrambled them. Shuffled them.
And somewhere in that process, I messed up the sequence.
The game didn’t work.
Not dramatically –no gasps, no awkward– silence but it didn’t land the way it was meant to. The mechanism failed. The magic didn’t happen.
The group was kind. Almost frustratingly so. No blame. No impatience. They laughed it off. Encouraged me. Told me it was a great idea and that these things happen.
But inside, I was devastated.
The disappointment wasn’t about the game.
It was about how quickly I turned a small mistake into a verdict on myself.
That night, I realized something important. Beta 1.0 wasn’t meant to impress anyone. It was meant to show me where the cracks were –in the game and in me.
Perfection isn’t the goal. Iteration is.
So I took notes.
I let the kindness land. And I started thinking about Beta 2.0 –not as redemption, but as continuation.
Lesson learned.