> I tend to prefer to commit every dang little change anyway, I just don't remember to do it because I'm in the zone and then inevitably wish I had at some point.

That’s what I do too until I developed a practice to break up into thematic commits as I realize I need them. And if I don’t, then I just git reset to the beginning and use git gui to commit lines and chunks that are relevant for a given piece of work. But with experience, I barely do the break down completely - I generally don’t even bother creating commits until I have a starting sense of what the desired commit history should be.