A glass of cognac, a blotter of LSD, go to the spa for a massage, turn on some Sibelius, Mahler or Tchaikovsky, and play Factorio all night.

Sometimes I also just work on my forever unfinished SciFi novel.

Or I install FL studio to realize 30 minutes later that I'm about as musically gifted as a pile of bricks.

Recently I was fed up with work and made a nice new bed for my daughter out of cherry & oak wood. Carpentry is a nice distraction from coding.

I can relate to the FL Studio situation.
I even bought it lol

oh man... I used to be a developer as well...

Same story... music gifted as a brick, LSD and factorio.

One day factorio wasn't enough of a challenge and I decided to play factorio in IRL. now I run a furniture factory and it all started with a kids bed :)

Being gifted has nothing to do with it.

Heres what I want you to do:

Start by whistling tunes. Yes really.
Do that for six months whenever you're alone.

You'll start by whistling songs you know and like.

Eventually you'll just naturally elide into new tunes (melodies mostly) based on *keys* you've heard before.

You wont be able to name all the notes in any of these keys, let alone the keys themselves.

But by the end of it you WILL be creating original melodies.

From there you can hum them into a tuner to figure out the notes one by one. And then use chord finders to find matching keys for your melody.

Also, start writing poetry. You wont be good at it, but in a 12-24 months this will naturally merge with the learned skill of coming up with melodies on the spot.

This is how I learned and it'll work for you too. Melody. Songwriting. Singing. These are not "talents", these are skills. Most people just dont see the fumbling that refines them into a solid foundation.

Aah factorio, my megabase is still waiting for me to finish it…