I am professionally a software developer for 8 years and I simply don’t have ideas for personal projects (Can’t find any problem that I can fix with programming). At times I feel like that’s natural and I shouldn’t worry about it. But on the other hand, I do like to imagine having something personal that I can work on so that even if some days on my main job are not satisfying, I can always work on my hobby project and find that missing satisfaction.
End goal here is obviously to get better sleep as sometimes my mind feels dissatisfied with the day’s work.
Funnily, I day-dream about the idea of already having done the boring parts (simply manifesting a project that already exists) of some personal project and only solving exciting problems in relation to adding a new feature or exciting aspects.
This creates a problem as I hate staring at a blank file not knowing what to write.
You are not alone. It’s not easy to find an engaging free time activity. And even if you do, you may get bored of it after some time. The only thing I can say is: even if something doesn’t seem very interesting at first, give it a try anyway (as long as it doesn’t require a huge upfront investment). You may end up liking the activity or you may end up with like-minded people. And the worst case scenario is, you have wasted some time.
I think majority of people suffer from not having a meaningful free time activity (amplified by the possibilities of internet). And I’m saying this without any data to back it up, so don’t quote me on that.