So what do people do? Do you simply pick something like DBI or ojects and see what you can do? Do you simply pick up a book and dive through it? Do you take examples from here and try them out?

I'd say you need to find a project. That could be something just for you -- e.g. I've written my own photo-album cgi and my own RSS aggregator script.

Or it could be a community project. This is good if you know that you're the kind of person that needs a community of programmers to help keep you motivated. Pick some Perl-related project and devote a few hours a week to it. If you want to be bleeding edge, hack on Pugs. Or maybe organize a Phalanx project. Or focus on a community project like PPI.

Or find a product that's cool and runs/runs-on Perl and hack it. For example, the Squeezebox server is written in Perl and you can use Perl to customize it, write plugins, and so on for a very cool piece of hardware.

The point is that Perl is just a tool -- so if you want play with that really cool, well-balanced, TIMTOWTDI hammer, just start looking for some nails in your life that look interesting!

As a backup plan -- visit here often. Reading and solving other people's problems is a great way of staying connected to the language if you can't manage anything else.

Update: fixed Squeezebox link.