Oh no it's happening to me too... Gave up so many hobbies/interests to focus on my career. Now I have almost no interest in side projects because I don't know what to build. (I mean something actually useful not a to-do list.) I love my job, but is this the path to burnout?

If you play games with mod support, you could write code-heavy mods. If the games you play don't have mod support, you could build modding tools for them. Or select a FOSS project you like but lacks behind in UI and bugs - and help it git gud.

You could play with game engines too. Like Godot.

I got into programming because I wanted to make games. I have been working as a controls engineer/programmer for 20+ years. My inner child still wants me to make games. So I play with game engines.

At times I do not want to look at ANY code. Now that my main job is programming all day all week I want to look at code even less. The challenge of programming just isn't there anymore. Most of the problems I solve are just structure and efficiency issues.

When I don't want to look at code anymore I play games and/or play with game engines where there is no deadline. I get to enjoy it that way.

Hey, don't knock to-do lists! I'm tempted to build one myself since none of the ones I've tried have the exact mix of features I want.

To some extent I think a career gives us more of a realistic perspective on our hobby projects. I had many, but realised I was mega engfaddd during the start of the project, then it usually never went anywhere. If it had it might've become less engaging and more of a job. As we learn what it takes to maintain something on a professional level I kinda feel like those hobby projects of mine would require more work to maintain than I'd like.

Here's a great place to build something
https://github.com/codecrafters-io/...