I made the mistake of asking a couple people I knew, and respected, for advice. I knew that they had had some "experiences" with a similar type of project that I was pursuing, and well, I thought it would be "smart" to see if they had any insights they could share.
And share they did. Mainly they shared their disappointments, their cynicism, their unhappiness. They shared their belief that I was heading down a hard and impossible road.
Their "advice" was really no advice at all. And I probably should have never even opened the conversation. I learned that they were pretty "burned out." Not exactly useful advice.
I do think that maybe sometimes you don't really want to be "smart." You actually do want to go into situations with a sense of wonder, a sense of naivety, and sense that anything can happen.
Sometimes you do want to rebuild the wheel. From the ground up. Sometimes you do have to approach a situation like it's never been done or thought about before, even if you "know" that it has been done and thought about countless times.
I guess sometimes you have to choose to be "dumb" and give it a go. Maybe that dumbness, is a sort of humility that not everything can be known in advance. And that you need to try and fail and endure on your own.
And yes, the "sea of possibilities" is a vast ocean much bigger than us. And your life and your naivety and dumbness can actually make your experiences richer and more exciting than you thought possible. Life!