I've been quite depressed lately[0] but recently found I can keep it at bay with significant amounts of caffeine and forcing myself to do a project. So I finished a Gigatron emulator I'd started a while back in Zig. I'd never written an emulator before, and chose Gigatron over the traditional starting point of CHIP-8 because CHIP-8 seemed downright trivial and boring. It's more or less functionally complete now, with video, sound, leds, gamepad, and a Pluggy McPlugface implementation that can save and load. I need to go back and clean everything up, implement a properly timed main loop, and replace the jank waveOut audio with WASAPI before moving on to menus, configuration, and ports, but I'm not super motivated to do any of that. Could be those are just not interesting enough, could be I'm building too much of a resistance to the caffeine.
Alternative project idea: A Haunted PS1(ish) game using a Voxel Space clone engine, also in Zig of course because Zig, despite its compiler bugs, rules.
[0] I blame the state of modern technology[1]. Everything is slow, buggy, and actively user-hostile and the world just seems to have accepted that. It is maddening.
[1] This is an obvious untruth. Though tech sucks, it is merely a minor contributor to my mental state.
I was in a similar situation. I recommend finding hobbies that have nothing to do with computers. I used to work on open source stuff all the time, now I find that my energy vanishes if I even think about it after work.
Picking up guitar, cooking, studying (real) languages has rekindled my sense of purpose. Seeing my technical improvement on guitar from 3 months ago and being able to play and make music with other musicians is far more gratifying than ... maintaining open source software. In the limited time I have before I, y'know, die.
Unfortunately it is winter now and my more active hobby of biking is off the table, and my body is unable to handle more than 2 days a week of climbing at this point. I've tried learning Japanese, which I find interesting, but I find that no resource for it quite seems to work in a way that isn't tedious to the point of making me not want to bother. That may be endemic to any language that uses logograms so extensively, I don't know. I have no desire to learn an instrument because I'm apparently one of those odd people who feels no particular attachment to music.
IMO with any language one needs some sort of motivation that's media based, as just trying to go through courses is extremely tedious. It's the same for Korean, Japanese, German and just about every other language I've studied/dabbled in. I didn't find studying kanji particularly difficult, it's just some tedious work required upfront to get to the actual goal: communicating.
So for languages I would recommend pursuing native media and language exchanges. Discord servers are great for this as you can find native speakers and people to answer grammar questions, etc. For me, watching Korean variety shows motivates me to study vocabulary, and exchanges are great for making friends to commiserate with.
YMMV but actually being able to play music really deepened my connection with music. I understand and appreciate certain things now that would have been hard or impossible before.
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It's dawned on me just now that basically most of my hobbies have a social element to them. So it's not just limiting my computer time, but also getting me to go outside and make new friends. Having social groups that aren't just tech nerds is quite nice as well.
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Those are just some example hobbies, anyways. I'm sure there's a hobby for you.
Alternative project idea: A Haunted PS1(ish) game using a Voxel Space clone engine, also in Zig of course because Zig, despite its compiler bugs, rules.
[0] I blame the state of modern technology[1]. Everything is slow, buggy, and actively user-hostile and the world just seems to have accepted that. It is maddening.
[1] This is an obvious untruth. Though tech sucks, it is merely a minor contributor to my mental state.