December 10, 2024
This post is part of my 30in30 challenge, where I write 30 minutes every day for 30 working days. Due to my limited time for this challenge, the content will be only very lightly researched and edited. The idea is to just write. Find my voice, and find the courage to publish. To follow my curiosity wherever it may take me.
This challenge is nearly over, and I haven't written a single post about coding, PHP, or Laravel. That's surprising because until recently, that's all I ever did. I would work during the day and then work some more at night. I listened to industry podcasts and dreamed about SaaS (Software as a Service) projects that could potentially earn me money. I imagined that success would allow me to do what I wanted, spend time with my family, and live happily ever after.
But I don't do that anymore. Somewhere along the way, my priorities shifted, and I realized that chasing the next big idea was no longer fun.
It's not that I've lost my passion for coding. I genuinely love my job. I find it incredibly creative, challenging, and satisfying. I love how there's a way to solve almost anything with code (within reason). What once seemed magical to me now feels accessible. Every complex app boils down to a sequence of simple steps woven together. There is no magic. It's just code.
I still enjoy podcasts where people discuss their tech side hustles, how they grew them, what they learned during the process, and how they earned enough to live the lives they always wanted. To an extent, I still wish I had a side hustle like that.
But things have changed.
Coding has become work — an inevitable reality since it's how I earn my living, day in and day out. But I can no longer code into the night and only code a little during the weekend, mainly to improve this website.
Maybe it's age, maybe disillusionment, maybe it's something else entirely.
But I stopped hustling.
I realized that the hustling lifestyle no longer served me. Don't get me wrong; it served me well in the past. Thanks to the hustling mindset, I learned how to code while having a newborn, got the jobs I did, spoke at the conferences I did, and started Larabelles. If I hadn't hustled, none of it would have been possible.
But it took a toll on me. Mentally and physically.
The migraines I suffer from? They're most likely from my posture and sitting at a desk (or on the couch) for long hours every day.
The anxiety I experience? I didn't even know what anxiety and burnout was until I got into tech.
That's not why I went into tech in the first place. I did it to have a creative, flexible job that I could do around my family. But I lost sight of that somewhere along the way. The job became my life. I had to make some changes.
I've accepted that I may never be a successful entrepreneur, and that's okay. Not every tech person needs to have a successful side hustle, however tempting it may seem. I do have the knowledge at my fingertips, after all. It seems like such a waste not to do something with it. But maybe now isn't the right time.
Letting go of this SaaS dream is a bit sad but also very freeing. It means releasing the constant pressure I put on myself to create something good enough that other people might want to pay for it.
Who knows, maybe the big idea will come to me once I stop looking. And if it doesn't, that's ok too. Some dreams were only ever meant to be dreams.