How do you find time and energy for personal projects?

One thing that helps me is to actually schedule time to do the cool, fun stuff, put it on my calendar and treat that appointment as inviolable as missing work. Because it is work, and eventually it will become a habit.

I also recently read Time Management for System Administrators which has some other helpful suggestions: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/time-management-for/059...

For me, weekends only... I used to do a lot of freelance work (years ago...more than a decade ago), somehow I used to find more time then for side projects... with full time employment is is impossible to find the time.