For me it is for instance my involvement in the demo-scene in the 90’s.
A concrete example is Nikki, a demo released in 96 and captured (with some technical difficulties) by a friend here https://youtu.be/t8o-uuq73UU?si=4dlTla0s2mDCVzCK
Working on anything “useless” is profoundly life changing and “useful” on the long run!
Only now am I able to do more similar stuff (my current research is around music + code + lightning and videos, this time connected to real life performances), and it is massively pleasurable (and also likely one of the most technical types of work I will be working on for now!)