It's a lot of work. I'm in a similar boat. I've been self teaching myself how to program in various languages and working as a Fullstack developer at a very small startup.

While I've learned alot, there's always more to learn and finding direction is a challenge you'll hit many times over if you stick with it.

Right now I'm reviewing various Open Source Projects I could contribute to as I know ultimately this will make me a much better developer. There are so many CLI and web development tools I use that I'd like to expand on but will require a marginal jump in my skills. Here are a few examples:

• Add a feature to the rTorrent client that would allow it to torrent over i2p
• Expand the amount of tools available within the SolidJS framework ecosystem to be competitive with React's ecosystem.
• Create a HTTP server in Rust that has feature parity with Golang's Caddy
• Add a feature to AntennaPod akin to YouTube Sponsor block that would allow for user contributed timestamps to facilitate auto skipping of ad mentions in podcast episodes.

I also am slowly working out plans to learn enough about Rust and browsers to recreate the terminal based browser Links in Rust.

But these are all just me spitballing. In truth, my skills aren't quite there yet and the amount of time to get there for each one of these is a lot. So I have to choose wisely and dive in deep on the project's codebase, probably for at least a year or more to make headway. But this is the mindset I think might help you. Look into the software you use a lot or like the concept of. Figure out how you'd like to improve it or add to it. Reach out to the developers of said software however you can, either make your case for the improvements you want to make or just help out on something they want to do with the software. Learn, listen. Rinse and repeat.

Hope this helps a bit.