"You will own nothing and be happy". Over the last decade, we traded ownership for convenience. Movies became subscriptions. Music became subscriptions. Even our memories became subscriptions. If your phone storage fills up, you can either delete photos of your dog and your overpriced matcha, or pay a monthly fee to upload them to “the cloud.” At first, it felt revolutionary. Instant access to everything, everywhere, and for cheap. But slowly, the cracks began to show. Subscription costs are climbing, platforms are fragmenting and beloved content disappears overnight due to licensing deals. Storage became another recurring bill. And somewhere along the way, we quietly accepted that our personal photos, documents, and data would live on servers owned by companies we’ve never met, in locations we’ll never see. This sent me down the rabbit hole of home-labbing: building my own local server infrastructure to reclaim ownership, privacy, and control over my digital life (and save some money). What started as a simple DIY server project quickly evolved into an exploration of self-hosting, networking, virtualization, storage, security, and the hidden complexity behind the cloud services we use every day.