Because it's frustrating af to read block text on mobile I'm just copying over your pull quote.

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I think it’s important to work some fun into programming projects. Give yourself permission to build something that already exists,if only to learn how to build it yourself. It doesn’t have to be a big serious project, or a perfect portfolio piece.

And on that note, don’t be afraid to hack things together. It’s a fun project! Write some terrible code that you know is terrible. Don’t stress so much about perfect abstractions and Best Practices and feeling like you have to incorporate every new library and tool. It’ll be fine. You can always refactor it when you write the blog post ;)