The blissful Zen of a good side project

Summary

The blissful zen of a good side project Published: April 4, 2025 Yesterday, like just about every other evening, my wife and I put our kid to bed, and sat down on the couch together. But for the first time in months, I picked up my laptop instead of my Switch. I don’t remember the last time I took a new side project at all seriously, but a glance through my projects folder indicates it’s been at least a year since I spent more than a day or two on one. I found a few I didn’t even remember starting, it’s been so long. Some I hadn’t even taken far enough to demonstrate whatever basic idea must’ve been in my head at the time; abandoned before they were even working. So it’s been a while. I haven’t exactly been feeling inspired since… Well, since I don’t know when. Maybe I’ve been depressed, or burned out. I don’t know. I haven’t been at my best; that’s all I really know for sure. It’s not that things have been bad, exactly, but they haven’t been easy, either. Whatever the reason: I realize now I’ve let it push my consumption-to-creation ratio wildly out of balance. I’ve spent pretty much every night in recent memory burning through video games, and I finally, inevitably, hit the wall with that approach. I wasn’t interested, or compelled. The fun things weren’t even fun anymore. The diminishing returns finally dwindled to the point I felt like I had to try something new. Something I’d been resisting. Something I was afraid of. I’m not sure why. Maybe I was scared to fail. Maybe I didn’t think I had a good enough idea. Maybe I didn’t think I was inspired enough yet. Maybe I thought it would be too hard. But finally, the pain of continuing with my existing approach outweighed the fears of change. So, for the first time in many months, I spun up a new project. It was a SvelteKit project, incidentally, although that’s entirely beside the point. I considered just creating HTML/CSS/JavaScript files and building from scratch. I also considered learning something new. I don’t t...