As a tradesperson working in metal fabrication and driving a 4kW laser cutter as my primary role at work where I have the ability to cut up to 20mm carbon steels, 20mm stainless, and 8mm aluminium, and 10mm copper & copper alloys. Our other workshop can cut much thicker carbon steels with CNC oxy and up to about 50mm stainless with a CNC plasma cutter.

All these tools are pretty much just glorified files and coping saws.

Kinda need something you actually want to build in order for them to be of any use. They tie in nicely to creativity in general.

My advice would be to pick up some other hobbies, wouldn't really matter what it is you'll soon start seeing things you could replicate or do better with customer design.

This is really good advice for basically any creative endeavor. If you want to learn, then by all means do tutorials and popular projects, but when you want to get inspiration for new projects, there's nothing better in my experience than having other hobbies and joining other communities.

This is somewhat related - I am working on https://makely.me - if you have a 3D printer you can earn money printing people's custom orders. Could serve as inspiration I guess.