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The blissful Zen of a good side project

joshcollinsworth.com

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Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#11

Post by cheschire »

pitched wrote: post #6
cheschire wrote: post #3

My latest side project started a couple weeks ago when I received an email from Cox that they would be forcing an unmanageable wifi network onto my router so that their cell customers would get more wifi coverage or something. So I ordered a DOCSIS 3.1 modem off amazon, then went and rummaged around in my storage box for an old 2013 macbook air, installed ubuntu server on it, and finally learned how to setup a home r…

As much as vibe coding is obviously ridiculous, using it as a crutch purposefully in this way is amazing. I heard someone call it a tool for energy management once and I feel that

Thanks! Yeah another side project I used was once I got home assistant running I used ChatGPT to write a lot of ESP32 code for me to get some soil moisture sensors working for my outdoor garden. It also gave me a lot of input on the wiring up of the sensor and ESP32. And it helped me with the general concepts of ESP-IDF versus Arduino frameworks for ESP32, getting an SSD1306 OLED screen running on it and and and...

So yeah, it enables my brain to just chase the inspiration rabbit without getting too bogged down in infrastructure.

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#13

Post by bbkane »

I love the freedom in a side project to write a thing, then rewrite it, then decide on a new requirement and rewrite it again. No deadlines, no stress, just incrementally experimenting until I'm happy.

At work they rely on me to deliver in a reasonable time, and move on to the next task. Once something is working, it generally isn't changed too much, even to improve it (obviously if it's really important to improve it we make time for that, but that doesn't happen so often)

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#14

Post by m463 »

bbkane wrote: post #13

I love the freedom in a side project to write a thing, then rewrite it, then decide on a new requirement and rewrite it again. No deadlines, no stress, just incrementally experimenting until I'm happy. At work they rely on me to deliver in a reasonable time, and move on to the next task. Once something is working, it generally isn't changed too much, even to improve it (obviously if it's really important to improve i…

I think it's nice to be able to write something well, polished and sturdy. Something better than at work. higher ideals.

Or, to write something that is house of cards nonsense that would never fly at work but does something fun. You don't have to explain. Sometimes not having to explain is the BEST.

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#15

Post by iamben »

I feel this will resonate with a lot of us. For a lot of years I very much lost the love of the web I'd had since the mid 90s.

A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to have the time, space and money to enjoy side projects again. Music, art, coding for the love of making something with no other reason than doing. I stopped thinking anything had to be anything - it just was. I could do for the sake of doing and it was liberating.

I've been very happy about this, it's been a blessing mentally. And very productive. I've enjoyed time and space, and I appreciate (again!) how lucky I am to be here.

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#16

Post by philip1209 »

I was thinking of this with relation to the book "Man's Search for Meaning", which asserts that "a personal project can be a powerful tool for finding and cultivating that meaning, providing purpose and resilience in the face of adversity." [1]

[1] summary by Gemini

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#17

Post by saulpw »

philip1209 wrote: post #16

I was thinking of this with relation to the book "Man's Search for Meaning", which asserts that "a personal project can be a powerful tool for finding and cultivating that meaning, providing purpose and resilience in the face of adversity." [1] [1] summary by Gemini

Thanks for citing your AI source, it's really much appreciated. But having read that book, it can't be properly summarized by AI.

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#18

Post by bsnnkv »

I've been putting a lot of my energy into side projects for the last five years, and while I've considered them all successful (i.e. they have filled a concrete need I had, and having addressed that need the workflow of my life has improved significantly), it's only this year that one of them has really started to take off financially.

I started selling commercial use licenses for one of my side projects in January, and in 3 months I've had more people sign up for license subscriptions than I've had people sign up to be sponsors on GitHub in 3 years.

I'm very cautiously optimistic that if I keep working at it, within a year or two I might be able to have enough license revenue to pick up part-time shift work somewhere that offers healthcare, and then spend the rest of my time in the blissful Zen of my good side project (will it still be a side project at that point??)

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#19

Post by bbkane »

m463 wrote: post #14
bbkane wrote: post #13

I love the freedom in a side project to write a thing, then rewrite it, then decide on a new requirement and rewrite it again. No deadlines, no stress, just incrementally experimenting until I'm happy. At work they rely on me to deliver in a reasonable time, and move on to the next task. Once something is working, it generally isn't changed too much, even to improve it (obviously if it's really important to improve i…

I think it's nice to be able to write something well, polished and sturdy. Something better than at work. higher ideals. Or, to write something that is house of cards nonsense that would never fly at work but does something fun. You don't have to explain. Sometimes not having to explain is the BEST.

Oh absolutely, the real win is being able to play with a concept with no risk

Re: The blissful Zen of a good side project

#20

Post by cafeinux »

I was just thinking about this yesterday. A few weeks or months ago I started learning something new from an online course.

Because I like using Anki to help me remember, I started copy-pasting stuff from that course to a spreadsheet to then export it as a CSV to import into Anki.

One thing leading to another, my spreadsheet quickly ended with weird formatting everywhere that would be converted through macros to HTML tags to style the resulting Anki notes.

This was still implying much manual work, so I finally figured I could just scrape the lessons for which I want notes via some script, and get the resulting CSV with a simple command.

I'm been working on that scraper for two weeks now, and I just realised yesterday that that's the most time I've spent on a side project since too long to remember, and it brings me joy and motivation in the evenings and weekends. Also, apart from the occasional script, I haven't wrote a line of code for years, and I don't know why I ever stopped coding since I love this so much. And last but not least, I decided to go for Python, and I've never learnt Python so it's quite a challenge but also a satisfactory experience.

All in all, this side project is spaghetti code with a dirty hacks sauce, I would never open-source it, and it's never going to be useful for someone other than me.

But it feels like I'm dusting off my brain, and rediscovering skills and passions I had long forgotten. Like finally waking from a long slumber. I'm currently a bit depressed, struggle to focus, and feel burnt out, but at least I am motivated by something and I create something for me, and this makes all the rest bearable.

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