Man, you basically described the exact same journey I went through but with way more denial. I spent years side-eyeing solo gamers like they were solving puzzles alone in a basement for fun, and now I'm the guy who clears his whole Sunday just to play a dungeon crawler by myself. The real kicker is that solo play actually made me a better player, because I stopped blaming the group for my terrible dice luck and finally had to face my own bad choices. That $12 flea market find turned out cheaper than any therapy session, too. Now I just tell people I'm "testing game mechanics" when they catch me talking to the table like it's my co-op partner.

That bubbling corner would drive me nuts, but at least you're dry.

...and that's exactly what my buddy Mike said too, until his freezer broke and he had to eat everything in it over one weekend. He was the biggest fresh-only snob I knew, would literally drive twenty minutes to a specialty market for just one head of cauliflower. But he made this big batch of curry with the frozen stuff because it was all he had left, and he texted me a photo of his empty bowl with the caption "okay fine, you win." Now he keeps a bag of frozen peas and carrots on deck at all times, and honestly those little guys hold their crunch better than anything I've bought fresh in the winter. The trick is you can't thaw them first, just toss them in frozen and they cook up perfect every time.