I have been working very hard for many years (20 or so) not giving myself enough time for mental recovery. I hit a wall recently! I am not in professional game development, my day job is digital business and product development for a SaaS legaltech that I own and created with my co-founders. It is fun, but there is a lot of pressure and it can consume my thoughts entirely day and night, leaving me mentally exhausted. I have decided I need a creative outlet for my mental health that will give me energy. I have always had a bunch of money-losing side projects running for learning new skills and experimenting with ideas, I need to focus on one that is fun.
Playing games has always been mental recovery for me, but I have always liked analysing how a game works and what makes it fun almost more than playing the game itself. I have created games in game jams and built silly mini games for my own entertainment earlier, but it is about seven years ago now since I last made anything! Just doing the math makes me sad, since I really enjoyed making those games. And I have deprived myself of that joy for such a long time. 😿
This is my motivation to make games now!