Maybe it's a personality flaw, but I get plenty of satisfaction from just reading blog write-ups if things I could have done with my tech junk, without all the associated time invested.
It's much easier to vicariously enjoy projects like these, which is why I think drawer-dwelling is an inevitable destiny for most of these widgets.
That's also why I'm tring microcontrollers, it's back to low level, less shiny projects, but mentally saner.
http://www.ti.com/design-resources/embedded-development/hard...
Seems like the number of them has gone way up so if you don't want to waste time thinking about which one to try, here are some suggestions.
Cheap and minimal ($10): http://www.ti.com/tool/msp-exp430g2et
High spec for things like motor control ($34): http://www.ti.com/tool/LAUNCHXL-F28379D
The Adafruit Trinket M0 was what I needed for a recent project. It's $8 and tiny. The feather boards also look very neat, if you need BLE, the ability to stack peripherals, etc. They all integrate with Arduino so you can be up and running in a minute. (They also support Python running on the device, which is maybe even easier than Arduino.)
[0]: https://docs.rust-embedded.org/discovery/index.html
[1]: https://github.com/rust-embedded/embedded-hal
[2]: https://github.com/japaric/cortex-m-rtfm
[3]: Such as https://www.st.com/en/evaluation-tools/stm32f3discovery.html
I'm sure it's a 'flaw' that most of us have.
I also like getting grand plans for a (hardware) project, ordering the parts from Ali express, then losing interest before the parts have arrived, so they still end up in 'the drawer'.