I work a similar way. I also tend to submit things that aren't quite right, or have fallen behind. Perhaps a Travis build matrix that's no longer testing curr

I work a similar way. I also tend to submit things that aren't quite right, or have fallen behind. Perhaps a Travis build matrix that's no longer testing current deps, or a project still doing things "the old way" that you can modernize quickly. It's also been fun to fix things my "programmer heroes" write off as unfixable. I've picked up a couple bugs written off as "this test is just always going to be flakey because <whatever>," learned their test framework, proved it was wrong, and fixed it. Good for your self confidence.