Something that I've been doing lately is programming as a hobby. Now, even though it sounds odd since programming is what I do for my profession I've come to realize that at the end of the day I still enjoy tons the thrill of exploring and "hacking" and learning!<p>Now, I've tried this in the past and failed, i.e. my hobby would become stressful, but what I've been doing differently this time is banning anything that looks even remotely related to work or professional growth or anything like that. This has lead me to some really fun and esoteric languages and technical areas that the only criteria is me enjoying myself and playing around :-)<p>I've playing with Smalltalk and Pharo, OCaml, Janet, Godot, and a couple of other things that I find interesting, and it's been great! Thinking about how to do "x", how to design it and run it in smalltalk to do "y" it's super fun, and the moment that it isn't I can just drop it and explore the next thing (analog electronics in spice? FPGAs? building my own CPU/language? SerenityOS? HaikoOS/BeOS?)<p>I think that many of us join tech with a deep passion for technology and tend to along the way lose it, but for me, "rediscovering" tech as a hobby has been incredibly satisfying, and doesn't have a big price tag as a few other hobbies I've tried!