The author wrote about long periods of time when he wasn't encouraged to make anything creative, and just consume.

You're definitely not alone.

In my case it's somewhat of a learned behavior, a lot of my favorite video games make me violently motion sick so over time I just stopped playing them.

Most TV is pretty boring IMO. There's always exceptions but it's not something I find myself regularly being drawn to.

I'm always tinkering on something (a longtime favorite is gardening), and I'm pretty sure I'll always be tinkering until the day I die. Some of us are just wired differently.

Can be a little difficult to connect with the mainstream folks though. I pretty much live in a different world.

Thankfully the long tail of the Internet means there is a world you can connect to.