Engineers solve problems. We use our expertise to take stressful and difficult problems and reduce them into simpler ones. You cut through bureaucracy and a healthy amount of talky bullshit to solve problems. The better you are at this, the more you're rewarded as an engineer. But this is a taxing process.
Writing code is creative. You find your own problems, and solve the ones you want to solve. If you don't want to solve something, you let it fester - or nurture it - as you wish.
Take a look at Racket. Read a book about Lisp games programming. Find an old C64 and learn some BASIC. Check out PICO-8. Or see Inigo's SDF website and try out some shadertoy. Ignore practicality, or focus only on your individual practicality.
Engineering is a discipline and that makes it tiring over time. You don't always have to be improving something.