GoKawiilIt used to be a weekend and a wish. Now it’s a creature I’m not sure I can keep up with.
We keep pet projects to learn. To stretch a skill, to poke at something new, and mostly to have fun. That’s always been the deal. A small thing on the side, no deadline, no users, no stakes. You feed it when you feel like it and you put it down when you don’t. You’re raising it for the joy of raising it.
I still start them the same way. But lately I look up from one and the thing has gotten strange. The way I work on it has changed. The craft has changed. The idea is bigger than anything I’d have dared call a hobby a year ago. Somewhere along the way the small familiar project I started turned into a whole different creature, and I’m still working out what it is.
The itch is the same
The reason I start one hasn’t moved. I’m curious. Something new shows up in the world and the only way I really learn it is to build something with it. Right now the new thing is agentic coding. A new toolset, a new way of working, a whole new way of building. The field is young and most of it is still being worked out in the open. So the pet project is doing exactly what it always did. It’s how I learn the new by playing with it. If anything it’s more alive than it’s ever been, because nobody knows the final shape of any of this yet, and that’s the best part.
I keep reaching higher
Here’s what changed first. The ideas I let myself reach for got bigger. I go big now. Things I would have called too much for a hobby, I just start them, and every time one of them comes together I get a little bolder. The ambition feeds itself. The more the thing can do, the more I let myself want from it.
The ones I never dared start
We’ve all got ideas we never dared start. The ones that needed a team, or a budget, or a month I was never going to find, so they just sat there, waiting politely forever. Now I reach for one and actually build it. The waiting is finally over.
They’re not so innocent anymore
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