You make a lot of good points here that I wish I'd thought of before publishing this! It's an interesting balance between having to choose between proficiency and freedom - I struggle with choices like this in martial arts quite often. I'm not sure which one I would need "more of" in order to feel happiest.

I also LOVE that article you shared on dopamine. I'm going to save it for further reference, I've been curious about the effects of "dopamine addiction" recently, and I'm definitely going to do more research.