Getting a foot in the door

I'm a pretty new programmer-about halfway through Sweigart's new book on Python and Cryptography. My question is, when the hell do I get to DO something? I can go through exercises and analyze how different cipher programs are written, but I'm really yearning to actually create or contribute to something. Any input?

>>36
you fail to be able to
Whoa there buddy, that's some advanced sentence structure you've got there!