Are you stuck in the rut of doing corporate cruft? I'm there, and it's unbearably boring. I'm finding inspiration in personal projects. Currently I'm investigating the effect of gerrymandering in the House elections. While I have strong personal political views, I'm doing this purely as a pet project. At the same time, I have to experiment with datasets and data sources outside of my day-to-day area of expertise. I don't have a deadline, but it's interesting. And I'm doing it in a Python, which is a new language for me.
Bottom line, it's a challenging problem, and a language challenge, so at the same time I'm expanding my skills.
I made games, didnt earn enough to keep it going, and went to corporate. Fortunately this job is a little lax on deadlines/schedules (though not so much on the cruft). Other than that, working on my games or related keeps me alive and looking forward. Spending time reading books helps a lot too.
