Hey, nice writeup there. I see that some of the points you bring up are a recurring theme among game devs -- hobbyists or not -- especially the part about perfectionism and fear of failure.
Please know that you're not alone in this: I've started playing with game dev 5-6 years ago, and I still haven't released anything. To give you a concrete example, I was working on an FP horror game a year ago, based on a story I had created. I spent no less than a month working on room/indoor asset scales, tweaking and fixing and rescaling, trying to bring it up to some kind of AAA quality. Time that could be spent working on the story, was spent satisfying some kind of unproductive OCD. I felt a complete fool when I started noticing that even acclaimed AAA games don't get this 100% right. The solution, I think, is the one you mentioned: just doing it. As cliche as it sounds, it's better to fail at something, expose it to the world, and get legitimate, useful criticism than spending time in an endless loop inside your head.
As for fear of failure, again, I don't think that any person who respects themselves and their work is nonchalant about failing. As long as what you do isn't a low effort plate of reheated TV dinner, there's success in the fact that you carried through your vision.
Last but not least, you mentioned joining a team. I normally share your sentiment, about keeping your work 100% close to heart and getting feedback on something that is actually 100% yours. You seem to be going forward with development, so I guess you got over that hurdle, however I couldn't...so when someone offered to take me in their team, I immediately accepted. You see, not only do I have to fight myself, I have a chaotic work schedule and I knew I'd end up dropping out of the jam. Thus, I figured it would be better to at least take part as a member of a team, to finally be part of a complete game, than not taking part at all. So far, I'm only gaining from this: the other people in the team are more experienced than me, so I can get a glimpse of the process without overwhelming myself.
