I do not know about your job, but did you have a look at that from another side?

Maybe van Gogh had to get up in the morning, paint some picture to live, but I am sure that the real art took some time to think about, making his mind up and suddenly the vision of the result comes up to the inner eye.

I think real development is a similar process and lucky are those who have a job, which allows that. There is a difference between a quick and dirty hack to get something running and the sophisticated code from the one-liner to a full fledged cpan module, that kind of thing you find here in the monastry. I do not believe that you can plan the real killer-app/mod. That needs a vision, which comes from a free mind and needs time to settle.

This is also a kind of self development and of course self-fullfillment (oops, native english speakers correct my vocabulary). Be lucky that you are allowed to think about your skills and develop them without pressure of work-to-be-done. take it as a creative rest, before you enter a higher level.

I made the same experience in my pre-perl era. As a good C/C++ programmer my jobs became boring, nothing new, breaking my ears when implementing new thoughts. Now there is perl and I am still developing new ways to put my visions into code. (still small ones, but getting bigger every time)

Don't worry, reality will catch you again.