​Anyone ever taken a break from your main project and accidentally made a side project that’s on par with your main project in terms of complexity?

I’ll explain.

I was working on my main novel, its meant to be the first volume of a cyberpunk epic (sus i know) and its been in the works for a long time. Well, as of now, its in its second draft and requires a lot of cleaning up to get to a polished shine, right? So decided to take a bit of a break, not to abandon the project, but to spend some time working on something else.

So i started a new project where i said to myself, “I’ll just ignore themes, i’ll ignore trying to make a complicated plot or character arc” and instead just focus on the stuff I like. Slow burn storytelling, cinematic style writing, etc. Thought I’d complete it by April 15th.

Its April 7th and I’m nowhere near done cause it ended up ballooning so hard XD.

So i was wondering, if y’all ever had that experience? Ya know, the type where your side project becomes insanely larger than you expected?