New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: How to get back hacker's mentality and joy of coding

Ask HN: How to get back hacker's mentality and joy of coding
8 by epimetheus2 | 0 comments on Hacker News.
I've been coding since I was 11-12 years and I can remember the incredible amount of hours I was able to put in just because I was completely zoned out by the fascination of coding. Now I'm 30 and I grew to be, at least according to market, capable (scala/backend) software engineer, but I no longer take any joy in coding. It's been around 12 years I've been coding professioanly (I had my first part time job at 15), and I can build a variety of interesting things. My biggest problem is I can't find motivation and focus to do it. I don't enjoy work, and I'd like to WANT to build new things, just like when I was 12, but I just don't care anymore. I pretty much count down hours when I don't need to code (when does my job finish). When I finally manage to overcome exceptional effort and start coding something of my own, it's usually a lot of fun, and there are some sparkles of fun, but it never turns into fully fledged flame that I used to have. And the next day it's the same again. For the most days I just can't overcome the lazyness to do something useful with my skills. I have balanced life, even considering corona, but overall I would just like to be fascinated by tech as I used to be, and toying with it would be something that I'd look forward to and take as a relaxation instead of something that saps the last pieces of energy that I have from work. I used to be like that, but last few years (5+) it's no more. Any tips on how to perhpas change perspetcive, habits, or what to read, so I can enjoy the skillset that I had developed over the years rather than feel miserable?