I think so. This is exactly how my own long-term projects that actually have users have panned out. When everything is left to your own energy and charity yet

I think so. This is exactly how my own long-term projects that actually have users have panned out. When everything is left to your own energy and charity yet it doesn't pay the bills, when there's work to be done then the project is lucky to get whatever you can spare. And it typically needs work in spite of what's going on in your personal life. I was at the beach when my hand-coded forum went down (btw, don't build your own forum). I ended up patching it live on the server, guessed at the problem, and had to clean up my mess weeks later. If you don't actually have users, then sure, that's something entirely different. I have plenty of projects that never left localhost with no technical debt, too. That's trivial.