The emotional component of running your own node

There is a debatable amount of financial value to running your own node from a pure economic point of view. But my node was down after a power outage and resync for two days. This is when I saw the emotional aspect to having my own node.

My node getting knocked out gave me the same feeling of disconnection as you get if your phone fails and you have a day or two while you are replacing it.

The financial:

About a month or two ago, I spent 0.00'39 BTC (130 USD) on the hardware for a Pi to run Umbrel.

I have about 0.15 BTC (5,200 USD) on it for lightning network (totally an unneeded expense)

Labor:

I probably screw around on the Pi about 30 minutes a day, checking stats, balancing channels, etc. This is essentially a hobby since I will never have a node that generates any appreciable number of sats. Hell, I probably lose sats because I burn them inefficiently to make sure the channels are balanced.

Utility:

I was surprised how quickly my little node became a major part of my bitcoin life. In the days of the resync while it was down:

• I had to check balances of wallets, ugh, on someone else's copy of the chain. It felt dirty.
• Wanted to send some sats around, I had to check the mempool on google instead of just looking in the window where I always have it displayed.
• My lightning channels were down for a few days, I worried about them. Running a lightning node is a labor of love for me.
• I love watching the blocks roll in like the tides on my own node.

Running a node is addictive. I think I need to buy a UPS so that the frequent power outages here do not knock my node out for days like this.