Similar to OP’s new hobby of math and physics, I recently started scratching a long standing itch to teach myself electrical engineering. I’m using books, YouTube and my brain to learn, and it feels like such a breath of fresh air compared to what my day job as a SWE has become since AI took it over. Because I’m not trying to build anything in particular — and since the learning _is_ the goal — I don’t hear that nagging voice saying, “AI could do this so much faster,” that pops in my head when I write code by hand these days.