Lucky for you Lego still sells tons and tons of sets that are just generic bricks for you to do whatever with: https://www.lego.com/en-us/classic/products and the Lego Creator line which directly emphasizes being able to make a bunch of things with each set: https://www.lego.com/en-us/creator

That was one of the points of this article—people see their themed lines, or their Friends line, and say "why can't it just be like when I was a kid?"—when what Lego said was "why can't we do both, and more?"