TL;DR: 1. no offense 2. mee too 3. join the elite club 4. pet projects 5. teach

1. First of all, don't take what I write as a personal attack; I am a bit aspie, and can't detect the fine distinction between being honest vs rude, I'm just unable to separate. Also, I don't speak English very well, so I may use phrases, which I think different that it sounds.

2. Sorry, dude, you're only an average programmer - as I am. I have 32 years of experience in software development, started at age 18, and I'm programming since I'm 13, but I would have started earlier if there had been computers (in a socialist/communist country, see COCOM list). I'm pretty good at setting up a moldel, a solution, choosing platform and tools, writing well-readable, fast and resilient code. My superpower is to cut out features, which looks necessary, but I know they aren't, and I'm always right. I am not too good at math, okay, bool algebra is my blood, and I can set up good KPIs, but other areas, e.g. trigonometry (not a random pick, see later) is not my table. Also, sometimes I create music, not the dumb write-one-pattern-then-switch-on-off-tracks style, but normal pop, smooth jazz, house, rock, punk etc. stuff. I love to make covers. Restricted platforms is my real home, writing music for C16/Plus4, ringtone, buzzer, bytebeat etc.

3. As I said, I'm pretty average. I'm not measuring myself to clerks, bus drivers and our PM, not even to usual programmers. There's a scene, where we count as "nice try" or "well, interesting". This arena is called demoscene (a good intro: https://www.wise-geek.com/what-is-a-demoscene.htm). I am a medium-low known member of this community. As I'm not too good in math (remember, 3D), which is recommended in this genre, and also I'm not 16 yo any more, so I have no time to release full demos requires months of work of more people, I found my way in the sizecoding category, I am releasing and contributing in 256-byte intros (and also musics, of course). As sizecoder, I still count below-average-talented, other dudes are writing raytracers and other jaw-dropping effects in 256 byte (usually we use 16-bit x86 code), so I'm trying to shine out doing funny or unusual things. For example, one of my latest intro plays a 549 notes piano piece on the MIDI interface (my friend helped to optimize it out, also there's a presentation about how it's made https://github.com/ern0/549notes/tree/master/prez).

So, if you feel yourself lonely because you're high above the average folks, come, join demoscene, and feel yourself lonely on the other end of the spectrum, above the average. Okay, it's not true, not every demoscener is pure genius, but they're way above average, so you'll enjoy. Sometimes these guys are weird, but this is a usual side effect. If they accept you (don't worry, we're not complete jerks), it will be a good feeling to belong to such smart people. Not least, it's a great _inspiration_!

4. You not mentioned, but I assume you have pet projects. It's a fatal mistake to not have pet projects. This is the difference between Real Programmers and this-is-my-job-meh. Even if you work as Universal Problem Solver, there will be several areas which you never deal with before, and some of these are too interesting to just ignore them.

I show you an example. Thanks God (despite I'm atheist/agnostic) that I don't have to deal with web dev, but I was curious what the heck WASM is (web without JavaScript, doesn't it sound good?!), and wanted to write just a plain helloworld C program for it to try it out... and there were no such, all examples were for Rust/Emscripten, so I made a small skeleton: https://linkbroker.hu/stuff/howto-wasm-minimal/ - it became somewhat famous, a bunch of folks thanked it, finally I felt that it wasn't complete waste the time spent with it (2-3 nights).

A special area of pet projects is, where not-too-complicated electronics plays role - keyword is: Arduino. It's a pure joy, even if only a small led blinks in your hand, driven by the program you wrote!

If you have such pet projects, sorry for the redundancy.

5. As I'm getting older, I'm creating presentations from my pet projects and other experiences more and more often. Remember your early career, it would be great if someone had explained clearly how things work: pullup resistor, abstract syntax tree (compiler tech.), version control, key-value databases, LaTeX, build systems, Unix pipes etc.

If you can suggest optimal solutions for a certain problem at work, you should not only justify why you chose that solution, but you should also teach how to do it.

Oh, needless to say: Maybe I'm Wrong. Your way might be complete different, I don't want to iterfere your life (as silly joke goes: - Have a good day! - Please, don't tell me how to life!).