Still deep in the homelab adventures. Learning more every week and keeping these machines, some new, some old, some really old, humming in the background has been its own kind of reward (and pressure)
I’ve also been working on the other machines out in the garage. Even the ones already running, some are web servers half-configured with half-built sites and half-built ideas. Others are Proxmox boxes running in the background, waiting for me to spin up some VMs.
I’ve been pulling everything into Obsidian, wiring it up with notes, tasks, and project lists. That’s the part of the hobby that actually feels like work. I always think a hobby’s going to be fun, and then somehow it turns into work. There are lists, deadlines, and all the stuff that doesn’t feel like it belongs in a hobby, but it totally does. Just surprising that that’s where I’m at with these projects.
Lately I’ve been thinking about why I do that, why I can’t stop turning even the fun projects into systems to manage, I keep finding myself trying to push harder on it, make more progress, get things done. If I’m going to spend the time, I want it to count. But then I stop and think, isn’t this supposed to be fun? Why does a hobby have deadlines? Part of me still says, of course it does. Let’s get things done, learn something, use the time and energy while it’s here.
By the time Friday night rolled around, I’d just wrapped up a couple of long weeks at work. I knew some free time was coming and was ready to get back into the fun stuff, the homelab, the projects, all the things I hadn’t touched in a while. I was heading to bed, kind of excited about having a full Saturday to do whatever I wanted. That’s when I started thinking, what would a perfect Saturday actually look like?
The weird thing is, when I thought about it, it didn’t look that different from a workday. I’d still be building something, fixing something, learning something. The lines between work and hobby have pretty much disappeared. A lot of the stuff I’m doing at work started as something I learned while homelabbing, and a lot of the processes and documenting in the homelab use tools or structure I pulled from work. It’s all connected, just different projects, different screens.
That’s probably where this weird kind of hobby pressure starts to creep in. I’ve never really thought about it before, but I’m starting to feel it, that sense that even the fun stuff comes with its own expectations.
The more I think about it, the funnier that sounds, hobby pressure. Hobbies are supposed to be fun, the things you do because you want to, not because you have to. They’re the projects you love doing, the stuff that makes the time disappear.
Even with the stuff I actually enjoy doing, I still catch myself thinking, why do I always want to push it forward? Why does every idea have to turn into something to finish, share, or document? I guess that’s just how I’m wired, I like building things, making progress, seeing stuff move.
Funny enough, when I pictured my ideal Saturday, this post was on that list. So here we are, Saturday night, crossing one more thing off
Pressure relieved for tonight.
