Expecting to become the next open source/free software rockstar after picking up programming, even for a couple of years, is unrealistic. People have their pinnacles of achievement at different ages. Hell, the age of maximum productivity is in your 40s, IIRC. The people who make it big in their 20s are largely confined to software, and even they're outliers.
If you want a sense of achievement, try getting involved in and hack on some free software project. Hell, if you have some vision that has already been fulfilled by some other project... but just not *quite*, then go, fork it and make it what you want to be. Eventually, you might end up significantly diverging from upstream and thus it'll become your own work of pride.