Once my manager asked me what my long-term career aspirations were.

I know I should have had a better response, but I told him the truth.

"I'm not sure... I just love programming."

He laughed and told me that I was going to wind up pretty happy.

However, as I grow older it is easy to forget that magical feeling I used to get when I first started to program.

Here are a few projects you can do, and that I've done, to help rekindle that spark:

Build a tool just for yourself

Resist the urge to find an off-the-shelf solution and build something that fits you like a glove!

Everyone has something that they wish they could build, tweak or automate. (And if you didn't before you will find one soon!) My last 'tiny tool' was a timer that would help me track how often I lost focus or was interrupted. Side note: Oof.

Additionally, naming your tool and letting it live in a perpetual state of being tweaked provides extra fun.

Need inspiration? Check out @thesephist's masterpieces.

Create a simulation or a game

I don't do a great deal of front-end work, but there is something great about typing words and actually seeing a computerized world emerge.

Recently I attempted to explain the behavior of rate limiting and backpressure in a system using Replit's Kaboom.js game library. It was a blast!

Replit.com makes getting off the ground with any project easy, and Kaboom.js has the right affordances to get you up to speed quickly.

Solve a tricky puzzle

I really like the feeling of wringing my brain on a tricky programming puzzle.

When my desk is covered in diagrams and notes I feel like some sort of mad scientist, the way I first felt when I got a computer to beep in a loop.

Advent of Code (adventofcode.com) is a great go-to, with many problems in the "difficult but not impossible" zone.

You do you!

I'm sure there are a million different projects that could be fun.

Let go of your expectations, do something different than you normally do, and be amazed that you can type words to tell a computer to do something.