Why every hobby of mine eventually becomes a software project
A small audit of the part of my brain that sees a hobby, enjoys it briefly, and then starts designing admin screens.
I am bad at leaving hobbies alone.
I get into something because it is fun, or beautiful, or weird enough to keep me awake. Then, after a while, I notice the spreadsheet behind the curtain.
Tabletop games became The Scribe's Tower, because running a campaign means holding too many people, places, hooks, grudges, items, gods, and half-promised consequences in your head.
Serial fiction became TaleHearth, because publishing chapters across platforms looks romantic for about five minutes and then becomes operations.
Branching stories became Plot Hearth, because choice trees start cute and end as graph problems wearing a cloak.
Even 3D printing, which should have remained a pleasant arrangement of resin, gloves, and questionable ventilation, turned into Malkav's Forge.
The moment it happens
There is usually a moment when I stop thinking “this is annoying” and start thinking “this annoyance has a shape.”
That is the dangerous bit.
Once the shape is visible, I start making lists. What does the person actually need to remember? What keeps happening twice? What does the spreadsheet know that the software should know? Which part is craft, and which part is clerical punishment?
I do not want tools that replace the hobby. I want tools that get out of the way of the good part.
For a DM, the good part is the table going quiet because the players just realized what their choices cost. For a serial author, it is writing the chapter, not checking whether Patreon and Royal Road disagree about time zones. For a narrative designer, it is the branch that lands, not chasing a broken jump at midnight.
The loop
The loop is not complicated:
- Enjoy a thing.
- Get deep enough to find the paperwork.
- Become personally offended by the paperwork.
- Build something.
- Accidentally learn a new domain while building it.
I used to worry this meant I was turning play into work.
Maybe. Sometimes. But it is also how I learn. If I can build a useful tool for a world, I probably understand at least one honest problem inside it.
That is enough of an excuse to keep going.