Life of a junior self-taught dev with a sysadmin job:

1)At work, desperately try to script and automate every task, even when it isn't nessecary.

2)Learn dev skills from tutorials and web courses at every minute of your free time.

3)When returning home get self-guilt because you're procrastinating instead of doing an all-night development like your dev friends

4)The only productive thing you do is more tutorials and courses because you feel your dev skills aren't high enough for a self project

Frustrated.

"because you feel your dev skills aren't high enough for a self project"
Have you tried building a project for your self?
Assuming yes, try again, same project, but improved way of coding, that will get you somewhere

@gitpush
I did try, I created a command line app in Python and attempted to build a simple web app with a django backend. But I felt I was wasting too much time on toy projects instead of learning serious skills

@clovisIrex toy projects will teach you the skills you want. I learned WPF from a toy project, Android and iOS also from toy projects.
now I pay bills because of them ;)

by the way that was around 7 years ago, so don't give up so soon

@gitpush
I learned WPF too, but as an accident(which apperently made me become extremely interested in development in a completely random set of events).

1.5 years ago I was very bored of my job and decided to write a lot pf Powershell scripts.
One of them was complex enough to get a GUI version. The next time I needed a graphical script things didn't run smoothly as I didn't know how to multithread in Powershell(or at all really). So I remade the a GUI in multithreded WPF C# code which I learned on the fly without even knowing what OOP is.

A few months afterwards I enrolled in a Java course which I finished in April this year. Self learning as I described in the OP ever since.

@clovisIrex great you already took your first steps, now start on a personal project, see how far can you go

What you're describing is called imposter syndrome.

@Ashkin
Exactly! How do I treat it?

@clovisIrex When you figure that out, please tell me. 🙁

So you're basically me in all points, where did you find a junior sysadmin job?

@bash-apprentice
I'm not a junior. Got 3 years of experience from military background.

I'm not a regular sysadmin tho. I'm a security sysadmin, I run and manage security systems and their servers.

I used to be a hybrid of security ops, sysadmin, and tiny bit of forensics/malware analysis. Now just a strange kind of sysadmin with dreams of becoming a developer.

@clovisIrex @clovisIrex Ahaa, thanks for that buddy. You came across as experienced, hence the question regarding junior status.
I'm a philosophy grad who's web-devving while dreaming of sysadmin and trying to build skills for it :p.

I'm self taught, and have been leading teams and doing architecture for a few years now. My two cents - make every task count. Even if it isn't a self project, push your problem solving and solution designing skills to the next level on each new task your day job allows. From the sound of "automating everything" sounds like you're already pushing yourself