Stop doing web stuff with databases. CRUD is boring whether or not it’s at scale or a ToDo. Find work where you code something you find interesting/challenging and that isn’t repeating the same patterns over and over.
I kind of accepted and came to terms early on that what we do (most of us?) is basically boring CRUD type stuff. Somehow, I've come to like being able to go into a big, old code base that no one wants to work on and actually learn it and be able to successfully fix a bug or add a feature. Something about it feels like being a plumber or "blue collar" worker of the programmer world. This is probably related to why I like Java, and why I made this post. It feels like a tradeoff I made (only in my mind): "Okay, I'll work on this boring stuff no one wants to do, but at least I'll get to use boring, stable tools that I can become good at and my experience will count for something." This is the lie.