Last winter, I developed an intense interest in self-hosting. For those who don't know, self-hosting is the practice of running your own online services: Web, email, cloud, etc. This do-it-yourself approach stands in stark contrast to letting Google, Meta, and other tech giants provide online services.
Self-hosting has some significant advantages. Independence from big corporations creates a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. There is ownership of your personal data rather than having it sucked up to the big ad machines. Another interest was to repurpose old computer hardware for a new, second life.
My self-hosting effort flopped though in spite of these good intentions. It never really got off the ground. Installation of libreserver on an old computer went well. It never went live though. Opening up the home network didn't work. Security was a major concern. The learning curve was steep. I probably could have figured it out, but didn't have enough time to dedicate to the effort. Not having enough time was probably the biggest problem out of all of these.
So, I'm in that grey zone: Not self-hosted, but not a client of those big corporations either. This seems to be the best mix for my needs. More of my time needs to be spent on content creation than configuring the services that run it.
Self-hosting still has some strong advantages though even if it didn't work out for me. If you're a beginner interested in trying self-hosting, look into the Yunohost linux distribution. It's the easiest way to start. See also Elena Rossini's five part newbie's guide for tips and advice for getting started. Also, best wishes for your self-hosting efforts!