Lost the spark

I’m a software developer who has had a very boring life at work lately. I’m earning well (75LPA+) and do not get motivation from the golden handcuffs anymore now. In terms of work, i mostly just avoid PIP and maintain legacy systems and honestly I don’t crib about it.

As for coding, well there’s no passion left. Like many others, just grinding and a good team circle(many of whom are coasting/leaving) but now everyone is upto themselves only. Apart from that, have always been too nerdy to develop any other hobby so i finally got around to playing with MCP (Model Context Protocol) and Claude 4.7 for a side project this weekend.

Hooked up a local agent to my bank just to see what it could do with my data. Somehow, the fact that a weekend hack gave me more joy than my actual job has being hitting hard a lot but I have been helping and healing by looking at the stability I have in life.

Friends are slightly pushing startups as an option but I don’t want to ruin my peace because I don’t feel that’s something which will help and don’t think a good WLB match will be possible. Perfectly fine staying at this place and alone in my role for rest of the life rather than ending up with a toxic founder with any sort of past. Given all this, i really would not want to harm or hurt my career because I won’t overlook such a fact. My standards for engineering culture too are a bit high I must confess in which its almost next to impossible to find any good org. I know its pretty fucked up but something which is non negotiable because it would not only affect me but also my mental health.

Have been thinking of healing myself by building more AI tools but then my plans for staying as an IC are not long term for sure.

People have been suggesting changing domains but I don’t think that will be useful and its all now cheap business.

Open to hear thoughts ! Thanks :)