I don't have much to offer other than I feel your pain. The creative aspect of software development is what has always inspired me, but has also been a curse. T

I don't have much to offer other than I feel your pain. The creative aspect of software development is what has always inspired me, but has also been a curse. The advice is always; do what you love, but banging out crud apps is not what I love. In recent years I've resolved myself to using my creativity to doing more work in less time, such that I can usually do my work in a few hours per week, and still meet expectations at my job. Also troubleshooting and debugging can be a lot of fun. Like I just tracked down a bizarre framework interaction issue that baffled the project team for weeks. That took a few days. So those are some ideas. Otherwise, cash the check and do the work. Do what you can on your own time, health permitting. This job pays too good to do anything else.