Oh man I feel ya. Sorry it panned out like that. I've always been intrigued by tilde servers for much the same reasons, though I've never committed. A lot of them look dead unfortunately. But I love that technical environment to host the community.

I'm thinking of setting up and sharing maintenance of a git repository with willing connections I've made where we'd share responsibility on some kind of fun technical themed project, or bundle of projects, to encourage upskilling while also build some relationships. It may not be what you had in mind but happy to discuss further if you're interested.