It's possible.  I set up a VPS node about a week after coin launch, only $5 a month, but wanted to try it out.  Set up the daemon, set up solo mining through the wallet at a whopping 35 hashes per second.  Finally found a block recently for about 2.15 CAL.  So it is possible, but you'll be waiting for a long time with no results.  Join a pool, that's the easiest.