I was in the same predicament at some point, and it was truly soul crushing. I now have more free time, and take care to not let it come so far anymore.

I don't regret it, since I was effectively paying forward for more free time to enjoy later, but there's a limit on how long you can do that, at least in my experience.

Have you considered developing a new Javascript frontend framework?

Just don't sit somewhere and start to ruminate about life. Don't ask me why I know this. It doesn't end well...

Pay it forward.

You may like to consider helping a larger community or audience with your skills and time.

If being altruistic doesn't sound appealling, you can always lurk around HN and other such virtual water-coolers.

I go online and race cars with people.

I try to have hobbies that aren't related to software development, and racing is one of them, though like every hobby I have I inevitably end up building some software. It's great to rely on learning and skill without the option of searching the internet for a solution.

I've thought of a few software projects I'd like to build as part of this, but I'm not going to put any timelines on those.

A cool thing about sim racing is that all the software you use (games) emit full telemetry about everything the car is doing so you can set up a UDP client to capture it and build useful tools for yourself.