I would like to expand the answer of duggieawesome
First of all, I need to mention this: every human is designated by what he does. Regardless how powerful you feel you are in your dreams, until it's proved in reality, it is nothing.
Second, every human has mental desires he must meet. If they are met, human feels happy. Most important, human has all properties to meet his desires. If these desires are not met, he feels unhappy regardless of how much money he has or anything else. Therefore, you need to clearly identify your desires and the properties you have that you can use to satisfy what you really need. I think it is clean code, everything must be in the order you know, understand and feel right. If you do not see ways how you can achieve these goals on your present workplace, you can sharpen your skills (mental properties that will make your desires met) in other field.
If you're working on a side project, either your own, or with a command of people that really care about quality of what you do), you:
- utilize your skills;
- gain satisfaction from what you do (because you use your skills to make it done, and through using your skills you meet your internal, mental desires).
For example, I am software developer (programmer, coder, whatever) myself. When I've got an idea to re-write the software I'm writing in the office from scratch at home, and started working this out, I've got myself happy. I was introduced into actions I don't usually do in the office: designing very complicated software. I saw it from very different points of view that I've never was at. I've got understanding of several frameworks, programming techniques, design patterns and even programming languages I never heard of. It was amazing experience: to be the creator of something beautiful and magnificent that only you (at the moment) know about. It felt like being a Maker of your own world.
Several years later I was still working in the office and played MMORPG at home, at the unofficial private server. Seeing problems other players stuck every time they played that server, I decided to fix them and deliver it for everyone's use. I was learning the code of open-source project, understanding the programming paradigms I never saw (later I used some of them in my work in the office), cooperating with other developer devoted to this project who had the same priorities as I did: clear code, best quality. It was the time of my life when I slept about 6 hours every day, worked 12-14 hours (first in the office and then at home), used my skills and was getting better understanding of myself, what I can, what I like, what I don't. During all the time I was inspired, and, I must say, happy. Although my work on that open source project was not paid off, I'm glad I had it done. The way I want and the way I feel it should be done. It felt right. It felt good.