How to Fix the 'AI Killed My Motivation to Code' Problem

Something weird has been happening to me over the past year. I'd sit down to build something - a side project, a feature at work, whatever - and instead of diving into the problem, I'd just. paste it into an AI chat. The code would appear. It would mostly work. And I'd feel absolutely nothing. I started noticing I wasn't learning anymore. Wasn't struggling. Wasn't getting that dopamine hit from finally cracking a tough bug at 11pm. The fun was gone, and I couldn't figure out why. Turns out, a lot of developers are dealing with this exact thing.