Your story sounds a lot like mine. I earn good enough money at a laid-back employer, and don't have the drive to job-hop or leetcode into a FAANG, or to do som

Your story sounds a lot like mine. I earn good enough money at a laid-back employer, and don't have the drive to job-hop or leetcode into a FAANG, or to do some big open-source software project or anything else like that. I focus on hobbies. What works for me is to keep the hobbies to myself - don't let it become competitive relative to others. That's a trap you'll never win, as you'll always be comparing to the best and not to any kind of average or typical performance. Here's a number of concrete examples. I like Rubik's cube puzzles, but what I do with them is get new puzzles of different shapes and figure out ways to solve them. I deliberately don't get involved in speed-cubing or such competitions. I like juggling, but I don't try to do any shows or competitions or anything; what I do is invent and learning new patterns and tricks for myself. I learned to sew, to make costumes for conventions; but what I do is walk around to interact with and entertain people; I don't try to compete in shows or for prizes or anything. I play board games, pinball, sports like bowling and ultimate frisbee; but always on a very casual recreational level and not in any kind of organized league or competition. What's important with these isn't the activity itself, it's the human interaction. You can find a lot of value in hobbies like these in a range of 20 to 200 hours invested rather than 2000. The key is to find self-satisfaction in bettering your own skills; don't try to compare to the self-selected best lifelong obsessives.