I'm the worst for not taking my own advice but I've often heard it delivered to me in one form or another when I've been in these similar situations... so here

I'm the worst for not taking my own advice but I've often heard it delivered to me in one form or another when I've been in these similar situations... so here it goes: What do you like to do? Do more of that. Easier said than done, I know. It comes off as an awfully curt way of suggesting that you throw out your entire life and reorganize it in a way that you can toy with your passions in pure bliss every waking moment. For those of us with families, mortgages, and responsibilities outside of work such advice seems useless. But it's not entirely useless. You just have to do more of that thing which excites you. It won't replace the drudgery of your current job (or any possible job you can get thereafter). But if you aim to spend a few hours a week on it for the sake of being happy and doing interesting things you might find an opportunity to make it your thing. Share your passion with others. Show them what you're up to. Aim to make a little progress each week. Keep it small. Finish one thing at a time. Don't leave dangling threads. Yadda yadda. The flip side of asking yourself this question is that you have to be honest in order to make progress. You may not actually like programming. Or perhaps what you do like programming is so niche that there isn't an industry for it (notice how few postings there are for BF programmers?). It's okay to enjoy programming as a hobby. Maybe you're actually a carpenter in a world obsessed with gizmos and you'd be better off spending the majority of your days planing and staining wood. Fiddle with computers and neat programs at night. That sort of thing. You're not living in a Kafka-esque dystopia. There are ways to get out of your rut. You just have to shift your perspective and be willing to do something about it.