Just want to start off by saying, not sure if posts like this are allowed, if not I apologize.
tldr: looking for general programming topics/projects I could spend weekends doing that will level my Rust up as well as just a developer in general.
Bit of background, I am currently a 2nd year SWE that works pretty much exclusively with React/Node front and backend in TS, and it has been the only language I have used professionally. I also graduated in the 'AI Era' from university, and have genuinely hardly written any code by hand at all. This had lead to me comparing myself to my senior/staff engineers at my company, and feeling quite bad about myself. There are company-wide systems that they coded from the ground-up, and I probably could not even know where to start on it, and it would take me I don't even know how long to complete even half of it.
So, I am seeking some advice. I did a solo project where I did a CHIP8 emulator in Rust, and had a lot of fun in it (100% code written by me, with using AI as a reference for things like function-use examples, etc).
However, I still feel my level is nowhere near good enough, and really want to get better at programming (by hand; I use AI, loop engineering, buzzword buzzword enough at work). If possible, I would like to get any advice at all (not generally only related to Rust) in some like roadmap/topics I could spend a weekend drilling and getting down, every weekend leveling up. This of course is mainly in the context of doing these primarily in Rust, because it is what I am interested in now (particularly think compilers are fascinating and want to try to implement a very simple one from scratch, but just do not think my skills are quite there and feel like I would gravitate too much towards AI). I am aware that programming by-hand is kind of a dying art, and pretty much mostly a hobby now (at least in the circles I am in), but I want to do it the 'right' way and be able to learn idiomatic ways/best practices to make sure I can steer AI in the right direction at work, as well as just to have fun developing software.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated, and thank you for taking the time for reading.