I'm fast approaching my #opensource sweet 16. 16 years doing work under permissive license, where everyone can see your faults.
To me, getting started the biggest hurdle was that I could do anything. People are so much better than me at everything. I feel like an idiot (because I put myself lower than others). I just am happy someone responds. When they ask me to create code, I feel like the war boy in mad max, like a god just looked at me, shiny and chromed.
Then, reality. These are real humans, often borrowing time. You are actually helping, but also codependent. Maybe you feel you aren't pulling you weight, there's still an imposter syndrome but you know with enough work you can at least "cover your costs". You don't pay much attention to the time spent, maybe you should have.
Then, leading. Wow people are great and weird and difficult. Sometimes your entire day has nothing to do with lines of code, and you try to figure out how to make your way through it all. Perhaps like me, you optimize for users or folks who are more reliable. You make choices, none are great, but the energy is rewarding as are the accomplishments. You feel a higher sense of duty and maybe debt.
Then, community. No project is an island, and users are not sufficient to achieve a goal. You also recognize not everyone cares about your project, but maybe they care about open source in general, or the language, or just friendship, it doesn't matter. You still do the work on code, you must, and all the drama, but you also spend time to make sure what you do has impact. Also you want advice from other people through all these things.
Maybe, burnout happens next ;) In my case, several times or stopping or whatever. You have the shame you feel, like you should be superhuman and just take whatever because you started something. Life happens, you realize there are constraints, choices, there's no easy decision.
If you feel up to it you get a second, third or fourth wind. You keep your optimism despite the reasons to be careful. You try again, re-engage, give it your all, but not 100pct of your all. You learned that doesn't work, so you try to learn what can work. You still want the ideals to occur but ack life is complicated, for you and everyone else. You do your best, you try to keep real while incentivizing folks into a start you had 16 years ago, or a maturity you saw in the past or wish you had.
That's where I'm at! I hope the story is interesting