[blark]

Programming really is about digging through categorically petty issues. You can make a game of it and even join a group in a shared game with a paradigm that treats certain petty things as extremely important.

Personally, I think the amount of energy it takes to play these petty games in any given employer/code-base wanes over time. I would recommend putting away all other coding for a bit and see if you start to get enough energy for doing truly different things in your free time.