Abandoned doesn't have to be forever. As I got older I had a longer time horizon and more skill, and found I was picking up and finishing projects I'd laid aside decades earlier.

Now when I put something aside I know there's a chance I might pick it up again in ten years. There wasn't much evidence of that when I was twenty-five.

It's been one of the best things for me about middle age.

Sometimes also the project is just 'done'. I many years ago made a windows screensaver (never released to anyone else). Just so I could have a '2001' screen saver. Basically in the background of the movie was all these screens flashing just weird status stuff. It was a cool aesthetic I kinda liked. Spent many weeks getting it to flash 'just right' and have the right animations for the right feel. Then LCD screens basically killed any need to have a screen saver. As basically instant on/off meant there was no reason to have the monitor running all the time. So the project was done.

Totally. It’s usually a lack of time, lack of energy, general ‘life getting in the way’, that leads me to drift away from a side-project.

These factors can always be reversed. And (whisper it) a bit of vibe-coding can also help unstick a project that ground to a halt because the next step was dull implementation rather than exciting creation.