This welcome is from another 'old-timer'. I'm the same age as you, turned 73 last December. Live in Australia and have roamed a lot in southeast Asia, until 'grounded' at home by Covid.
2020 wasn't a good year for many of us. In most ways change can be good and a useful catalyst to shake out the cobwebs in our minds and bodies, turning us to new pursuits or back to beloved old ones, but Covid wasn't the way, at least for me.
Like you, I went through a 'dry' spell last year, in my case for six months. From mid 2020 I noticed that my forays into the Aussie countryside with my digital gear just weren't cutting it for me any longer. Most of my images were deleted and the rest filed away unedited into folders. Not my usual way to do things, but my new way.
In November my partner sat me down for a serious chat, noting that I seemed to have dried up with my digital shooting and suggesting I should go back to my too-long stored film cameras and work through the 'analogue' process.
Out came my four Contax G1 cameras and five lenses (21, 28, 35, 45 and 90). Not long before this domestic tete-a-tete I sold off half of my darkroom, including a beloved Leitz Focomat 1c with a Multigrade filter head and many once-cherished darkroom accessories. Which may or may not have triggered a spell of depression and caused me to turn off my photography. I'm not sure, but it does sound like my beloved had it pretty spot-on.
I bought new batteries and unfroze what 35mm film I have left in the last of my darkroom freezers and off shooting I went.
I can't say my results have been superlatively good, but I do feel much better, and I've since got back into my film scanning (I have a Plustek 7600i for 35mm and an Epson V600 for medium format, the latter with a little care and attention capable of turning out surprisingly decent results from my 'miniature' films if I pay more attention than my usual slapdash methods to exposure and processing) and am quite happy with the results.
We all need to take regular breaks from our ongoing interests (and passions) and it helps to put away the cameras for whatever period of time we see fit.
Next will come unboxing my Rolleis and my Zeiss and Voigtlander 6x6 folders and heading out with some 120 film.
