Look at antirez for inspiration. He builds and maintains what is, arguably, a complex, relatively boring stack used everywhere for building larger, also complex systems.

He still has time to hack together a fantasy console for his kids, motivated I think, by the same forces that prompted your lament:

http://github.com/antirez/load81.git

.. dig in, submit a PR, and leave the despair behind. Your kids can still learn computing just as you did ...