I find that at work I get more disheartened when I know there's a fun hobby project waiting for me at home. Part of OP's problem is that he, like me, started w

I find that at work I get more disheartened when I know there's a fun hobby project waiting for me at home. Part of OP's problem is that he, like me, started with programming as a hobby and still wishes it was. Note that in hobby programming there are still boring parts to push through. Additionally I still have to do sys admin work so I have a server for my website. And other such things. But as a hobby I can choose to pause it whenever I want. I can stop and go read a book instead. I can switch to another project just to keep working on something fresh then switch back when I have the energy to push through the boring part. Also, real work often has policies, paper work (digital version of it), politics, and all kinds of other stuff that gets in the way of just writing code and making nice software.