Hell yeah. That first taste of freedom from packing light is great. I remember the first time I realized I could stick with a single bag on a 10 day trip. It made the journey in Japan a lot more tolerable.
Over the years I've kept optimizing my setup more, and it has paid off in droves
Check out tail scale. It's wire guard made easy. I expose http services to the public Internet, and have all my devices on the same network so I can access local services without exposing them to the public Internet.