It’s not as impressive as some of the other projects mentioned here, but there was a one-year hiatus during the filming of Cast Away to allow Tom Hanks to lose all (and more) of the weight he had gained for the first part of the movie. His beard and tan were earned honestly during that time as well.
I fit into about the same categories of use as you do, and I agree with most of your assessments. My one complaint is that, when I go to enter my master password the keyboard no longer pops up automatically, instead requiring that I tap the password field to bring it up. That stated happening sometime last year, and I’ve lived with it, but it’s just a quality of life thing that I miss.
Water and hand soap, unless they really need to be cleaned right now. I used to use a microfiber cloth, but I ran into the same problems as you. Soap and water will allow you to get oil from your hands and face off, as well as water spots and whatever else might be on there, and it’s gentle enough that it doesn’t hurt or scratch the lenses. When I put my glasses back on after cleaning them like this, It’s a Whole New World starts playing in my head.
“Seize the day, put no trust in the morrow” - Horace
“Seize the day and throttle it.” - Calvin and Hobbes
If you end up going in the Godot direction, a friend of mine has some useful tools to easily get started on animation rigging and controllers here.
He got started a couple years ago with no game dev experience, and he’s done a couple of game jams recently, but most of his time has been spent building workflow tools. A couple months ago he finally got around working on one of the original games that he’s wanted to make since he started.