Thanks to @DarthCoin for encouraging me to make this post!

I first heard about LN from a post on r/bitcoin, and it got me really interested! I had been using bitcoin on-chain for a while, but I hadn't really checked out the layer 2 networks before because I thought they were just like shitcoins. But after reading the whitepaper, docs.lightning.engineering, and the LND and CLN documentation folders, I decided to give it a shot.
Since my vpn accepts btc-ln as payment, I downloaded the latest release of LND at the time, 0.16.4-beta, and set up a personal node on a linux box I had lying around. I opened a couple of channels with around 700k sats and let it sit for a while as I learned more about how LN works. I wasn't sure about becoming a routing node until I stumbled upon Darths blog posts and tools like charge-lnd, LNDMon, and Ride-The-Lightning, which gave me the confidence to go for it!
I renamed my node to Fopstronaut and opened two larger channels, with the goal of helping decentralize the network by avoiding big hub nodes like ACINQ and creating alternative routes. When I successfully routed my first payment, I was thrilled and just couldn't wait to keep exploring the Lightning Network!

I found out about LightningNetwork+ thanks to Nostr, and I decided to give it a try by joining my first liquidity swap, #18323. After that, I ended up creating and joining 7 more swaps over the next few months. At one point, I think I had over 20M sats in capacity! Liquidity swaps are awesome because not only do you get two channels for the price of one, you make the network stronger - it's a win-win for everyone!
Using tools like Amboss and SparkSeer to look up nodes, I got myself into a good spot in the network by reducing my betweenness and hopness. If anyone has any tips on improving my scores, I'm all ears! I set up automatic fees with charge-lnd and joined #ZeroBaseFee, gradually bumping up my fees from 10ppm to a range of 20-70ppm. It seems to be doing the trick for me! I've looked at circuit breaker too, but I'm a little concerned that the default settings might be too strict and mess with my routing.

I decided to challenge myself and try passive rebalancing, and i've had some success! I was routing over a dozen payments a day at one point, and even peaked at 27, all without needing to rebalance manually! My strategy was to use charge-lnds proportional strategy with a wide fee range, around 40ppm, to signal the available liquidity in my channels. I try to steer clear of actively rebalancing whenever I can, usually just dropping the fees or asking your channel partner to adjust theirs will unstick a channel!

I've more recently also started capping the max HTLC at set intervals as my channels fill and drain to avoid running into insufficient liquidity failures. This strategy has been a game changer! I've noticed that having 3-5 HTLC limit stops along a channel seems to give senders enough info to route correctly, and I'm hardly seeing any insufficient liquidity failures now. I'm really stoked about how things are going! And, setting up LNDMon has been amazing! It's been so helpful in figuring out how my node is doing, and what changes to make!

Everything changed when the Ordinals nation attacked, and the high fees forced six of my busiest channels to close. It was a major bummer, but I'm staying positive - at least I weathered the storm better than others. Some of my old neighbors have totally shut down, which is a shame, and ever since then I've been having more downstream failures. Despite those setbacks, I'm determined to keep growing slowly and hopefully increase my routing even more in the coming year. I've learned so much and had a blast! I can't wait to see what's next on this journey!

tl;dr I smoked one Bitcoin and now I have a routing node :3