YMMV, but I've also found that treating all side projects as potential businesses sort of...takes the intangible quality of magic / fun / joy out of those side

YMMV, but I've also found that treating all side projects as potential businesses sort of...takes the intangible quality of magic / fun / joy out of those side projects for me. For OP: it's OK to not want to monetize everything you do, even if those things might potentially be monetizable (which most things are, as the parent comment mentioned) - past some point, the incremental value of really, truly enjoying more of your time can have way more value than even fairly large amounts of additional money. Where that point lies exactly is a matter of debate, and probably depends greatly on how you place value on intangible experiences vs. tangible things. From experience, many people in the tech industry are well past this point but don't realize it, largely because we have a cognitive bias towards comparison with those around us. (Also, the above framing suggests strongly that we can learn to change where that point is for ourselves.)