Random epiphany of the day (which I might have said before, but that would just mean I haven’t internalized it yet, so it deserves to be said again):
No matter what the medium, no matter what the genre, I will always, always turn any media-consuming activity into an opportunity to learn about what works and what doesn’t in said medium/genre, and approach it from the point of view of learning instead of relaxing and opening up to someone else’s work.
The only way I’m going to relax is to take frequent breaks to stop thinking so much, which means (a) neither consuming nor building anything or (b) building something using the precise application of skills well within my comfort zone, wherein you hit a mindset not so much unlike that of (a).
I should probably swap out ‘games’ in my rotating schedule with something like ‘doodle’; relaxing with games just isn’t working…