Why do I hate games?

I've been wondering that for years now - after almost every game I play, I feel a deep sense of dissatisfaction. I expect at least some games I pick up to not leave me forcing myself through, and yet game after game, after a few hours I put it down forever and think "that was a waste of time".

This has turned into a two pronged problem: 1, why the hell do I find it so awful to play games now, when I loved them growing up? Is it just nostalgia? Are games in general less fun the older you get? 2, every time I go to play a game I get a twang of anxiety: If the past 100 games have been such a downer, forcing myself to begin the 101st game when the outcome is near guaranteed to be a bad experience makes me afraid to even start.

This relationship with video games has been cycling in a feedback loop for a while now. So I decided to write about it:

After every game I play, I'll write about my time playing, and why I felt it didn't work for me. If my playing-new-games experience has some sort of silver-lining in the form of a critical analysis after the fact, I might at least have that to look forward to. Perhaps I'll be able to get to the bottom of why gaming is so stressful for me, and maybe after the law of averages kicks in and I'm lucky, I'll finally find a game that I actually like, too.