[beeminder]: https://www.beeminder.com/
I can't understand this at all.
I've been playing piano for 50+ years. Still practice every day. Play in amateur recitals. It's fun, but hardly relaxing. It's a lot of work, concentration, and study. And as I get older it gets more challenging because of physical limitations (movement, eyesight, hearing) that I have to work around. My fingers don't work like they used to, and sometimes I have to decide to leave out a note, or move something to a different hand, etc. Painstaking note-by-note and phrase-by-phrase analysis.
Memorization is also tough.
The hard parts for me are finding good arrangements, making stuff sound good in a mix, writing lyrics, finding ways to do certain non trivial things in my DAW, reviewing what software I want to purchase, ... Stuff like that.
It doesn't involve much focused dedicated practice. It's just too general of an activity, and it's very easy compared to playing classical pieces on a piano.
But how fun/relaxing it is can differ between instruments and between genres (baroque vs folk or blues) and approaches (e.g. strict sheet music interpration vs improvisation).
Also working with the DAW is more like composing, arranging, conducting, and producing/mixing than playing an instrument.
The best example of "relaxed piano playing" I can think of is actually the old Build Mode music from The Sims[0]. I'm 90% sure that all those piano tracks are just someone messing around improvising over a few simple chords, because it sounds so much like what comes out when I'm doing the same kind of thing.
Now, it's always a little stressful to record that kind of playing because if you play something bad sounding then you'll have to start over (or at least, splice multiple takes together), but if you're just playing the piano for fun, I think it mostly is relaxing.
Have you ever tried just playing some chords in the left hand and kind of letting the right hand do what it feels like?
[0] Here's Build 3 for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gGHQicQUw4
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Edit: Looks like that YouTube video actually links to an article which confirms my old suspicion that it's improv piano:
> "When Russo and Martin couldn't quite capture that wistfulness themselves, they called Burr. A successful jazz pianist in his own right as well as a highly sought-after session musician, he was comfortable working off of Martin's ideas (and, unlike Russo, he was a pianist by trade rather than a saxophonist). Burr says he loved the cut-and-paste style of recording that Martin employed. It was a case, he says, of "just looking at Jerry and asking, 'Does this sound like what you want?'" So, while Russo went away and worked on his pieces only to see them chopped up by Martin, Burr was happy improvising."
Perhaps you play classical or learn pieces and paly them as is? (as you speak of "memorization" and "note-by-note and phrase-by-phrase analysis").
Try something like jazz, improvisation, etc - it can be inifinitely more relaxing, and much less taxing (you study to get the general technique for something, and then you can apply it in any way you like, be lax about it, switch things around, and so on).
In about 2003 I tried something very similar, except I time boxed a song. I had to spend an hour and a half and each song could only take 15 minutes. That ended up being incredibly fruitful.
You don't have time to think, you just go stream of consciousness through whatever comes to mind. Drums are weird? Too bad, there is no time, go with it. Throw in a 8 bar synth or piano loop. It's not good? Well, there isn't much time so on to the next thing.
This ended doing a few things for me. For one, there was no second guessing anything. You just made what you made. For two there was no pressure to do a good job. You can't do a good job you are just rushing through. That lets things just flow. Thirdly it allowed me to try a ton of things that I wouldn't normally try. There was no wrong answer. All three are kinda related.
I made some of my favorite songs that way and they are songs I still love. I later applied this to writing a technical book. I forced myself to write for 5 minutes a day, everyday. Sometimes it'd be 2 hours and other times it'd be 5 minutes but I got the book done and it became pretty popular. (also had a monetary penalty if I couldn't write on any particular day).
I really love this way of working. Just time box and go.