Both rewarding and frustrating.

The frustrating:

-the sheer randomness of channel closes -channels going offline -payments getting stuck -just funding bugs that don’t get fixed quickly or at all (I found at least one in both LND and CLN) -rebalancing can be a pain and expensive -dead/zombie channels -liquidity being drained too quickly by a hog like wallet of Satoshi -node dies and you can’t troubleshoot because you are away -node corruption due to power loss (learned this the hard way bought UPS but even then it’s caused issues) -software updates that causes unforeseen issues -feeling helpless when you have node issues/troubles -nodes get deleted from mobile wallet and having to reset -tor network is so unreliable almost makes lightning unusable but is needed to protect your IP address

The rewarding:

-everytime a payment goes through the sense of euphoria that comes over you like wow this actually works -using your own capital to make and route payments -earning fees when you route (one time my node was routing v4v podcasting streams it was cool to earn those fees -selling channels for sats -making payments in bitcoin using your own node no hosted wallets!

If you are in for the long haul it’s fun to tinker and experiment but can be expensive.

Hope this helps