Ned Batchelder is a wise elder of the Python community. He recently offered this advice on side projects, “Forgive yourself”
My advice is: forgive yourself. It’s OK to rewrite the whole thing. It’s OK to not rewrite the whole thing. It’s OK to ignore it for months at a time. It’s OK to stop in the middle of a project and never come back to it. It’s OK to obsess about “irrelevant” details.
The great thing about a side project is that you are the only person who decides what and how it should be.
As someone who’s using side projects as “auditionware”, I need to keep this philosophy in mind.
Batchelder also plenty of other good bits of advice in that post. Especially the nugget about how “nice” becomes easier the more you do it. Gotta get the reps.
Meanwhile, just go read the whole thing.