I'll take the compliment, thank you!

When I do it on my terms, yes, I do enjoy Java in particular and programming in general. A lot. At a certain level it's not complicated or mystical at all. All you're really doing is simple math (adding, subtracting, etc) on numbers, bunching them into representations that make sense for your problem (how a point is an x coordinate and a y coordinate, for example), moving little arrows that point to said representations, etc. You combine these very simple primitives into a predictable system that solves whatever you're working on. Yeah, you do have to be able to abstract this in your brain. Pictures on paper helps sometimes; I do that myself.

I come in with a maintainability mindset. I enjoy writing simple, to the point, straightforward code that most importantly, I can read and understand in 10 years. Java's "verboseness" is a feature in that respect. Have you tried maintaining someone else's Kotlin? Forgetaboutit.