It's a right pain. Need a bitcoin node first of course, which takes ages to build and sync. Then you gotta put some capital into the channels, and knowing where to open them is tricky. There exist automated systems to do channel management, but are they any good?
Don't forget to backup your channel state regularly.
You'll need to manage the channels liquidity by doing onchain transactions to "loop out". So open a channel and all the liquidity is on your side. Loop out by sending half to a node that'll do an on-chain transaction to send it back to you. Then you'll have a balanced channel and can use the on-chain funds to open another channel.
Hard drive errors ruin it all, if the drive fails everything needs to be rebuilt.
Only way to really have self sovereign money, but it is definitely still lots of work.