I think that there's some extent to which the mere fact that something is your job drains the motivation from it. In my day job, I work on some world-changing t

I think that there's some extent to which the mere fact that something is your job drains the motivation from it. In my day job, I work on some world-changing technology that will massively improve the state of security; I see applications for it everywhere. I have nearly complete control over the technical aspects of the project, from language (Rust) to framework to code style, etc. I enjoy working with my colleagues, and we all feel strong loyalty to each other. It's the best work situation I could hope for, and I plan to stay there for the foreseeable future. And yet, I somehow find continuing to work on it to be a bit of a slog. At the end of the day, I breathe a sigh of relief and crack open my personal project, which is a point of sale system written in COBOL on an AS/400. This, somehow, sparks joy. Yes, there are aspects that can make a day job more or less pleasant. Keeping up with the churn in faddish sectors is exhausting, and I'm glad that I've been able to avoid touching the web in my career. Unrealistic deadlines are a sure-fire trip to burnout for me. Constantly putting out fires gets demoralizing. So, you can control how much your day job bothers you, and even like it, but it's never going to have the same joy that you feel when you're working for yourself, with nobody to answer to. I still think it's a better career track for me than any of the alternatives though.