I am professionally a software developer for 8 years and I simply don’t have ideas for personal projects (Can’t find any problem that I can fix with programming). At times I feel like that’s natural and I shouldn’t worry about it. But on the other hand, I do like to imagine having something personal that I can work on so that even if some days on my main job are not satisfying, I can always work on my hobby project and find that missing satisfaction.
End goal here is obviously to get better sleep as sometimes my mind feels dissatisfied with the day’s work.
Funnily, I day-dream about the idea of already having done the boring parts (simply manifesting a project that already exists) of some personal project and only solving exciting problems in relation to adding a new feature or exciting aspects.
This creates a problem as I hate staring at a blank file not knowing what to write.
What are you passionate about outside programming? Reading? Writing? Hiking? Tv or movie watching? Connecting with friends? Gossiping about the neighborhood?
What ever it is… do that. Focus on that. Then, if you still want to build personal projects, see if the tools around those hobbies are adequate and to your liking. If not, there you have it. Your next project.
If everything is good and you enjoy your hobbies, please understand that software engineering is a job. You don’t need to do it outside work as well. It’s like asking brick layers if they have personal taj mahals that they’re building brick by brick outside of their daily work of building other people’s houses. They’ll look at you like you’ve lost it.