A recent post from Manuel Moreale (On hobbies, side projects, and money) made me realise that the boundary between side project and hobbies in my case is very thin.
While a lot of what I write comes with the intention of "I'm building it for myself and it might help someone else out", the result of most of what I build never reaches to the masses or not convincing enough for anyone to use.
This leads to a pro and a con
It's also been brought to my attention that
I could justify both points but that is not what the post is about and neither is it something that needs justification because it was built for me to begin with.
But, and it's a big BUT; The things I do build for others (a.k.a dumbjs) also end up not getting much attention for the same reason and that does sometimes make it feel like the effort was not worth it (and then I find something else that's fun to build and the cycle continues).
The post and a tiny discussion with Manuel made it clear that at some point I'll have to talk about money.
It's not hard to talk about money when I'm donating it to others but when it comes to asking for it, I seem to freeze up.
Now since there's a minute context of what and where this is coming from, I'd like to let people know about Manuel Moreale's One a Month movement for his People and Blogs newsletter series and also that my Github Sponsors page doesn't have a minimum amount tier. It's been that way for ever and I would like to believe that people aren't aware of it and that's why there aren't many sponsors (to keep my sanity).
2nd part of this is for the OSS devs and users of their product/library/etc. If you are a user and you think I'm not worth the $1 sponsor, you obviously have free will and can choose to not sponsor but I'd like you to at least sponsor someone who's work you are dependent on in the OSS circle. If you are an OSS dev and are reading this, unless you are someone who's living off of the Sponsorships, please do lower the barrier of entry for the donations so more people can contribute financially.
End of the day, whether you contribute with code/money it helps the authors realise that what they are doing is actually helping someone. It's understandable that not everyone can help financially but I agree with Manuel about $1 being low enough to set and forget.
That's mostly it for today,
Adios!