Wow, that's great...this is exactly how I feel. In the last year, I spent much less time thinking about the cool projects I wanted to build, and much more time learning all the things I've skipped: testing frameworks, devops, command-line toolsets...even just how to properly organize a codebase.

It's been far, far more rewarding...Projects that I wanted to do a year ago seem so trivial now...I can't overstate how much of an impact making the development process easier and less of a strain on your real life can really pay off...being able to accomplish bigger goals with better results ends up being a very nice side effect