Yeah it does sound like you think about this a lot and you’re really trying to make it work. I guess thinking about it isn’t gonna be the solution.

It sounds like your dopamine systems are all screwed up - and make no mistake, most of ours are nowdays. When we spend our days getting flooded with quick hits of pleasure, scrolling memes here, gaming after school, masturbating whenever we want, etc., it’s really hard to feel pleasure from the little things in life. But that’s the point of dopamine: it’s supposed to tell us when we’re doing the right thing and make us feel rewarded just from having our life in order. But the pleasure of caring for your home is not going to be as intense as the rush you get from leveling up or opening loot boxes or whatever.

That’s why we always see in these kinds of threads comments like “You wanna take away the ONE THING i enjoy in this miserable existence!” well shit sometimes that one thing you enjoy is making it so you can’t enjoy anything else.

Then the question becomes How do I recalibrate my dopamine systems? And that’s a complicated answer - if that’s even the issue here! But yeah, more thinking (or words from me) probably wont do the trick.