But if anything, I lament that I don't get to code enough these days. Any time I get an opportunity to sit down and spend even a couple of hours actually writing code is usually the highlight of my week.

After decades you may develop your own mental mentor who tells you to do things and you listen, or maybe you will be an idle content your whole life (hey, direct personal familiarity here.)

You must find an objective or goal you will actually care to work towards at expense of your self satisfaction.

Or try another hobby/profession. Hardware sensors and the like are going through an auspicious time. Never before so cheap or plentiful. Get sensors and data flow going from everything commercial or civic.

You’ll have to learn discipline to become an independent contractor or proper business opportunist, otherwise you are a wage slave competitor like “everyone else.”

At 3 years, you’re probably leaving behind the part of your career where you learn to write good code at the function/class/small module level and entering the part where the learning is about design and architecture of larger systems and libraries. This is also the point where at many companies you’ll start to be expected to engage more with what the product is and the ultimate problems you’re solving for the user.

Are those new areas of learning less interesting to you? More interesting?