Partner bought me a pet feeder with built in webcam. Worked great for three years until the servers went down. First and last time I trusted any internet connected appliance .

Yeah, there’s a few. Habitica comes to mind, but the generic term for this is “gamification”.

I mean there is peertube for video content. I know my instance runs aNONradio which is pretty eclectic music and talk radio, but there are probably other similar streams. There’s quite a few services for CC licensed music. Personally I listen to a lot of actual play RPG podcasts, which are probably right on the border of hobbyist / side hustle stuff. More indie and low budget than say, critical role or the like, but still partially monetised, even if only to cover costs.

Depends what you mean by “non-commercial” and “stuff”. Does community-supported via Patreon count? Are you after music, video, fiction writing, non-fiction, comics…

Brains do weird shit when you’re not around. Try not to dwell on it.

This is true, but anecdotally it happens quicker with some words than others.

Snail

Hospitality worker here. Working weekends means less time to socialise with friends who are on a M-F schedule and less opportunity to attend events in general because they’re usually scheduled on weekends. You’ll have to put more effort into staying in touch with people and finding things to do on your days off.