Thanks for reading and thanks for the kind comments.
It's true, having this project under my belt has already helped my career in many ways. I'm pretty sure it was a big factor in landing my last job. Not to mention the many hours of practice I put into coding outside my day job.
I never really wanted to compete with Unity but in hindsight I may have been better off piggybacking my library on Unity rather than MonoGame.
You pretty much nailed it. I went into the project without a clear monetization plan and when I got around to trying to figure it out I didn't know how.
In hindsight I totally agree with you. Unfortunately when I started the project I wasn't in that mindset. It started as a passion project, mostly an experiment in building an audience around something I enjoyed creating.
More recently I've been getting some help to understand the things I did wrong and to start with the business strategy.
I don't know if I'd still feel like quitting but I would have more money so that would be nice.
Joking aside, it's really hard to say how I'd feel. 5 years is a long time and if I'd been able to put more money back into the project the story would have been very different.
In any case, I've grown a lot since I started that project and I'm ready to spend the next 5 years on something new. Hopefully more financially sustainable.