Exactly! If it's not worth playing, it's not worth doing on your free time. When you learned Perl and Php, wasn't that kind of play also? Maybe it's the Php rotting your brain.
Also, write down ideas for projects that you would like to do. It might wind up longer than you excepted very fast... and as bonus, you'll get to learn new algorithms, programming paradigms and so on.
Hah. PHP brain rot. But alas, I do know many other languages. I'm a professional programmer. I was just using that as an example I felt meaningful at introducing myself to other programmers. Your suggestion is a good one though-I do need to start playing more with my coding time.
Now, learn some new programming language (see some options at http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Language_Comparison_Table) and start playing again!
Also, write down ideas for projects that you would like to do. It might wind up longer than you excepted very fast... and as bonus, you'll get to learn new algorithms, programming paradigms and so on.