What to do while I'm ill?

I've been off work sick for over two years and often still feeling pretty unwell, low energy and my brain not functioning properly. I've started a few things, but the gaps when my intellect or motivation evaporates has made it tough to keep things moving and I have little to show for my time.

The biggest investment I've made has been in working through a ML course (Fast AI) which is a pretty good top down style learn by doing tutorial. Unfortunately each gap forced me to restart and I've only made it to lesson 3 (a few times).

I have a vast list of other things I theoretically want to do, for example, figuring out how to run Liminal RPG, and I've spent some time making lists which always fills some time.

Recently I started thinking about making a proper effort to learn Unreal, and someone observed that I needed to decide what I wanted to achieve first, and I realised "learn Unreal coz it will be useful" did not cut it.

And that led me to thinking about energy, barriers and motivation. When I'm feeling well, I'm full of energy, I barely notice barriers, I charge in and make things happen. I don't prevaricate, I don't get bored and shit happens.

At the moment, however this is sadly rare, I'm tired all the time, my body hurts, my brain is often fogged, and motivation is thin on the ground. Everything seems difficult, and any barrier be a wall.

But...I don't do nothing. I read easy books, watch easy TV, solve simple puzzles, follow my curiosity and get hooked on doing odd things. Like building a spreadsheet to calculate the amount of materials required to insulate our attic. So I am doing things, but often I'm not doing things I assign value to.

There's an interesting book called Start with Why? that focuses this key question for any effort of any scale; for projects this is about why are we doing this thing, what are we trying to achieve, and this is essential, but hiding behind it is the question for each of us what motivates you? Not what motivates you to do the boring stuff, but what gives you more energy than it takes? I've had times when I've worked 100 hour weeks, and enjoyed doing it.

So for me, right now, the question is how do I do something worthwhile when everything worthwhile is too hard.

And rather than seeming impossible, it suddenly feels soluble. I need to figure out why I can do the things I can do, why I'm motivated to do those things, and recognising that shape the goals I set myself to match.

I'm not motivated to just learn Unreal because it's good for me, so I need to make it fun, to engage my curiosity, and if I can't do that then find something else. I also need to make it adaptable to my current state, instead of fighting it.