Having a game I'm into makes every day enjoyable

For anyone currently looking for something that does this for you, may I suggest Advent of Code: https://adventofcode.com/ This is the first year I've really made time and space to enjoy it, and enjoy it I have.

Also - this article ends on such a weird note given the message that the rest of it delivers. The author has finally realized how valuable it is to have something that gets them going, regardless of whether or not it ends up being "useful", but then immediately stumbles over the fear of it not lasting and failing to achieve greatness in it and sharply concludes with that sentiment.

Perseverance through intermediate-ness into greatness is irrelevant to enjoyment. Sure, be great at your hobby if you're driven to be great, but if you're looking to maximize enjoyment, it's much better to focus on a) embracing intermediateness, and b) exposing yourself to new things so you can find the next hobby that will light you up.

I agree it’s somewhat dystopian when referring to video games, however I feel some types of games can offer genuine fulfillment. I used to play tennis and volleyball regularly, and although these are sports they could basically be considered physical forms of games. The routine of training and competing against others definitely added enjoyment to my life and was a welcome distraction from anything else that may have been bothering me at the time.

Mindless video games where you chase dopamine hits and programmed stimulus and have no interaction with others isn’t the same.

Mahjong ?

I tend to associate mahjong with gambling and smoke filled illegal parlors. The Asian counterpart of poker as it is played in western stories.

Probably a stereotype. Just as poker usually isn't played in saloons with revolvers on the table nowadays, but I wonder what kind of reputation it has, and if the money aspect is as prevalent as it is in poker.

My 2015 PC started dying, requiring BIOS resets and other weirdness like suddenly not outputting basic VGA graphics.

So I finally upgraded to an AMD 7800X3D, nvidia 4070 12GB, 64GB DDR5-6400 RAM.

All to play Factorio! :D

Apart from a strange error where Linux will crash if I have 2 DIMMs in the motherboard, it's been a great upgrade. (I'm going to submit bug reports to Fedora, but I'm assuming some combo of the MSI B650 motherboard, CPU, and memory are contributing to the error. Memtest says the memory modules are OK)

Now I have a PC that can handle the modded-Factorio huge railway city block maps I like to play. Each block of space is surrounded by 4 lanes of railway, with interchanges. It's really nice to organize the refining and production into specific tasks, like "deliver lead ore, process it into lead oxide, combine that with carbon blocks to make lead ingots". Now the distribution method is via railway station so it's far more flexible than simple conveyor belt outputs. Loads of fun! And very complex too, but that's half the fun. Needing "blue science" which needs circuit boards, which need solder, which needs lead and tin ingots, etc etc. I can lose hours of time to this, moderated only by my back hurting and making me take breaks.

A nice bonus is that my new PC is capable of running smaller LLMs locally, so I can mess around with learning the new hotness technology. Plus new toys are always fun.

> once they hit a certain wall, growth slows down drastically.

Deliberate practice addresses these plateaus. I think you need to constrict your focus, zoom in, change the scale so the slowing of progress doesn't feel slow. If you can accept that, it can be just as satisfying. A great coach/mentor can help here [but how can you evaluate them?] As the frontier of your knowledge expands, there's more of it.

funfact: Usain Bolt hit a plateau as a teenager, but got a new coach who addressed a congenital spine defect with specific strengthening exercises, and to train less (he was overtraining).