   Will I ever be able to do indie development again?
  I think it is has been eight months or so since I did any serious programming on my own. I never thought I'd reach the day where, after getting home from a mostly 9-5 job (doing programming), I just wouldn't have the heart for it. And it sucks, because there are things that I still want to make, and I know I'm capable of it, but it is like once I sit down and start...it is like I can't follow through with it. I'm the type of person that always needs to be working on a project like this, and I still have dreams to make things. But, at the same time, it is like the feeling is gone, and now I'm wondering if it will ever return.I'm 24. Guitar has taken the place of programming in terms of time management, and thats cool. I'm more an engineer than a musician, though. Perhaps it is more to do with the current stage of my life. I feel like my priorities have shifted, and the large amounts of time spent on the computer are harder to justify to myself.I'm wondering if anyone else out there has gone through a similar thing, and what you did about it.   
  Start using a higher level language (preferably one different from what you're using at work). Your time is more precious so you don't have the luxury of being able to manage every byte when a computer could be handing it just as well while you get to the good stuff.   ;  I feel the same way as you Matt...and I turn 24 in 5 days too.  Except instead of guitar, I have poker...I'd probably be better off with guitar though!   ;  Yep, had the same here for a while. Luckily for me, we use C at work, and I'm more of a C++ + STL person. So using those concepts, I'm still able to feel stimulated to do things at home as well as at work.   ;  Programming Job + Hobby Programming = one of them will suffer badly.Usually it's the one you're not getting paid for. :D   ;  I just fought off my funk recently.  I was in a bit of a funk because I was coding all day at work and then going home and writing more code.  Being a game designer but currently employed as a software engineer, I have been getting really sick of writing code.  Last week, though, I realized that my whole problem is that I was trying to make games at home that used new technologies as the primary focus of improving gameplay (physics and such).  Since then, I've been making a game that has very few technical challenges and much more of a game design challenge (a turn-based strategy with a very different approach then I've ever seen before).  Switching from a focus on technology to a focus on pure design has reinvigorated me, and I almost have a playable prototype up already (after only a week).   ;  Heh, I'm also 24... Yeah, I felt like that too. I've only got back in to indie game development recently actually! Before I stopped I was trying to program a 3D rendering engine. Then I changed job IRL and got involved in World Of Warcraft which I sunk a whole year in to doing hardcore raiding and basically never touched code during that time except for at work. Last month, at the end of my WoW gaming (I managed to force myself off it though I still crave it - weird shit!), I realised I really wanted to program again but to make a game not an engine. I'm not an engine programmer and don't remember why I was working on it in the first place...Now I've started an open source game project which uses other freely available packages in it's development so i'm not reinventing the wheel. Once it's up and running I hope I can concentrate on the areas that really interest me (feature programming and AI).   ;  I think a lot of it has to do with what my goals are. When I graduated college, I just wanted to get settled into a job and get acquainted with making a living. Those are pretty basic things to do, and not really goals, so I was able to divest the remaining focus into working on hobby stuff. I was pretty much just looking out for myself, only. Nowadays, I'm far more focused on people-related goals. It'd be nice to be dating someone, and doing some service projects around the community. These goals seem much more important than programming to me.Does this mean I'm growing up? :)Part of it, too, I think is a learned apathy for programming that I'm picking up from work. Writing code in the corporate world is a constant exercise in frustration for me, because it seems rare that people care about the quality of the code being produced. (I had a manager say the reason we're able to get products out the door so quickly is because we cut those corners. I think a part of me died when I heard that, even though I knew it all along.)   ;  same here.i blame a combination of too much attendance requiring uni stuff, projects and such, and my girlfriend.i really dont know what id do if i was living together and having a job: i really need large blocks of consecutive free time to do anything usefull. luckily summer holidays are coming up, and ive made sure to keep a few weeks completely free.but a better long term solution would be to finally step up and teach myself some time management skills.   ;  Living together with your girlfriend, having a job and having a band does put some limitations on the amount of time you get to spend on your hobby projects. But it's not really that bad. And to answer the OP take a short (or longer) break from the programming bit at home.When I feel the way you do (which I do now and then) I usually solve it by researching stuff in the industry that I find interesting. After a while that usually makes me hungry enough for programming to dive right back into it!