Dunster, you have so well captured what happens as we age and stop practicing regularly.
I grew up in a musical family and started music lessons at age 8 on an accordion. We soon got a piano so piano lessons were added. Then I made friends with someone who played the violin so I switched from accordion to violin for a few years until I met a new friend who taught me to play the clarinet over the summer between grade 8 and 9 so I could join the band with her in grade 9. The band teacher switched me over to saxophone to balance the instruments and I played alto and tenor sax until graduation. All that ended when I graduated and moved away from home because I no longer lived with the piano and could no longer rent an instrument affordably. I did inherit a piano and had it for about fifteen years until life circumstances forced me to sell it as it was too big and heavy to move around. Fast forward many, many years of longing to make my own music and I find myself with a flute and electric piano. I haven't even tried the flute and wow, rusty hands on the piano. I have to concentrate to read the music and it sometimes feels like my brain is splitting apart when each hand gets going on something different. My DH has a guitar and ukulele, neither of which I've heard him play, but every so often I think of taking up guitar. There's a YouTube video for learning anything these days. In the end, my musical creations aren't enough to satisfy the part of me that yearns for music and the whole process is so frustrating that it takes real will power to sit down and practice. I thought it would happen when I retired. Sigh....