To those who might consider themselves “well-rounded” with careers and families and sports etc. Does that magic and sense of free time to dig deep into something ever come back?
This may seem counter-productive and like it might ruin the fun, but the opposite turned out to be true. Since free time is finite now (and arguably always was), it helps to get the most out of a game, prioritize which games I really want to play, and what I expect to get out of the experience.
Part of what I nostalgically yearn for was that feeling of, "my homework is done, it's a Friday night, there's no hockey tomorrow morning. I have a Pentium 2 in my room, summer breeze through the window, the world is asleep, there's a distant train rumbling quietly by, and I'm about to spend an hour reading up on every detail of Baldur's Gate while it installs."
This is probably gone. There's so many parts of this that don't work anymore. But I guess I really cherish that it happened. Those were absolutely magical nights.