The loudest applause usually comes from people who didn’t see the practice.

Applause is a reaction to the visible part. The crowd arrives for the performance and sees none of the mornings, the repetition, the versions that went wrong in an empty room. So praise tends to be loud and slightly misdirected, aimed at talent when the real story was attendance. Enjoy it, and do not let it become your measure of whether the work was good.

Keep some record of the practice that nobody sees, even a line a day. On the weeks with no applause at all, that page is the only honest evidence that you are still going. It will also stop a crowd deciding how you feel.