You could learn music theory, sight reading and do piano practice, if you are unable to do them already? What about having a small setup, where you rotate certain items occasionally, leaving most stuff in their cardboard boxes? That’s what I do.
Either way, children and family first, then job. When you are old, that’s all that will count in your life!
Maybe you should quit for a while and see if the urge to make music comes back.
Totally okay to take a break. I have 5 kids so I’ve had to take breaks multiple times. I’m also a recovering addict so I’ve had to take breaks for other reasons too. My only advice is maybe instead of selling all your gear, box it up and put it away. Then, when the urge returns, you can get out your gear and it will feel new. I’m in the process of rediscovering the OT and my Polyend Tracker after going through the ringer the past few months. I dabbled with my OP-1 a little bit and got reacquainted with Ableton Live here and there but that was about it. Summer is almost here and I always get the itch to make music with all of these modern boxes around that time. What I’m saying is, it’s totally okay but maybe don’t sell everything. Take it from someone who has gone through this multiple times and wasted an inordinate amount of money and time. Trust me, you don’t want that guilt. But yeah, the family comes first. Do your thang.
Buy a Keystep or some other mini keyboard.
Sit down with your child and make a racket.
Everything you said here describes my situation. OP-1 definitely saved me this time around.
Ive just started improving my Ableton gen. I cant believe the sounds you can get out of it esp wavetables. Its like a studio within my studio.
I did this - became a parent and sold all my gear, except the digitakt and a very expensive pair of headphones. I play almost everyday, because logistically is very easy to pick it up. And like you said - just for fun. I can recommend!
Several moves, job changes, getting married, and having kids all contributed to me not really making any music at all for almost 20 years, this after some fairly serious lessons, practice, and classes in music theory.
I kept my guitars, though, and always felt that once my kids were older and more independent/doing their own things, and I was otherwise more settled, I’d look forward to making music again, as a hobby. A few years ago, I started playing again a bit, and my brother in law turned me on to Elektron boxes, which completely hooked me. Now I get some hours each week noodling, jamming, and making myself dance a little bit. No pressure, just for the fun of it.
If your various boxes have brought you joy in the past when you had fewer distraction, I’d really recommend boxing them up and hiding them away in a dry place. They’ll happily await the future version of yourself that has the time and inclination to play. And if that person never (re)emerges, you can sell these future classics at future classic prices. 
That’s awesome that the M8 has helped you focus and make music. I feel like these types of portable devices are so important for folks who want to make a tune but may not have all the time in the world.
The Rytm is fun… it’s just a programming centric kind of fun. I was merely contrasting that to the Tempest because for me it is a very clear and concise difference relative to the topic at hand in this discussion.
Turning encoders while live recording… yes, of course. I know this machine well. But as a drummer, I’m typically thinking about and playing 2 to 3 parts on live input. Many times, the nuance I want for each part lives on different knobs, and at times different pages. So, to use live recording on the knobs, I typically need to come back for another pass and find the control I’m looking for out of the many pages of parameters at hand. This starts to feel programmatic because it is centered around the original sound design rather than intuitive live input.
On the Rytm, the 2 items that are immediately at hand to record are 1) Velocity and 2) Trig Length. I maximize those on each sound to get the type of live recorded expressivity I’m looking for. I would like more. I have tried using the Control Inputs, but their action is not recorded. They merely offset the parameters they are assigned to, whether those are played live or by the sequencer. A useful tool, but not exactly what I’m after. I am on a mission to solve this and I’m pretty sure it’s going to revolve around highly customizable external MIDI control of various parameters.
I see your point a bit better.
You could use Performance macros as well, but they are not recorded either.
But yes, I can see the attraction for the hands on approach when time is limited.
In this regard, Strega and possibly (something that is more than) a looping device is fun
I hear you. Sell it all, but keep the cash stashed as your gear fund.
If you have any expensive vintage stuff you are uncertain about, maybe hold on to your fave. Getting it again may not happen. But, starting anew can be good too.
But hold that gear cash stash for when you might wanna get back in. Should that not happen, get something nice for your kid
If I recall… with the Rytm “we’re not talking about a simple looping device”. 
Don’t sell it all cause you’ll buy it all back. Box em up and take a break. Come back to it.
But you also mentioned you don’t know where to go next with your music.
YouTube obviously has a ton of music making tutorials.
343 Labs offers courses
Some of the YouTubers offer tutoring and private lessons.
Also, AudioTent has some good templates for you to learn from
ProducerTech and FaderPro offer some good follow alongs as well
Finally, not knowing the kind of music you make, ProMusicProducers has some really easy and clear tutorials to follow along to
Rather than trying to produce, take the time to learn…
good luck
“If you only applied yourself you’d find life easy!”
I’ve skated on for forty odd years on masking and trying to shoehorn my neurotype into conventional employment to varying degrees of success, trying to find locals that are spicy-brained isn’t quite “easy” in Seattle but more inevitable than persons into making music that also think like me.
It’s like dating sites in a way, challenging for someone with rejection sensitivity to put themselves out there when you’re quite a bit weirder than the sea of conventional rockers who connect to each other.
The problem with external courses and books is that if you’re overwhelmed, you can substitute one overwhelming bit for another 
I’m working on writing up my own “lessons” in OneNote, to “teach” myself the kit I already own and force myself to go through the more difficult aspects of wrapping my head around live performance.
The things I love about jamming are really hard to do solo, the fun and improvisational elements. Solo I often take things too seriously and it cuts into my ability to let loose.
Ideally the best tactic is to turn on the recorder and jam at length, but I have a “be good” switch in my brain that gets flipped when I know the machines are watching
It’s possible to get past that, and I do sometimes to good effect. But your average day I’m not always in the headspace to relax when I know I need to expend mental energy on creating something from nothing.
Totally get you!
Four years ago i was spending alot of time with the OT, AR and A4, making tracks from scratch, dialing in sounds, ect. Took a lot of time but was fun. Now two kids later i just had the same problem. It frustrated me so much. Not enough time to make the setup shine, could’n finish songs (which was and still is one of my goals). Also an Elektron fanboy as well.
What changed it for me was getting a Polyend Tracker. Limited compared to Elektron, yet a different workflow with the spreadsheet. So now i sit down in the couch with the Tracker and a power bank for maybe half an hour, starting out just noodling: chopping up beats, sampling, having fun with the granular synth. And before i know it i have a sketch to a whole song. I dont know what it is (probably it’s very easy song mode), but I always end up with having a good time and actually making music. I havn’t tried that with another instrument.
Still looking forward to have the time to pair it with the elektrons maybe in a couple of years hah.
Just to say, hope you find your device, the one that fits with your life as it is now and meets your goals about making music 
If all else fails become a Poet.
I hear you on this. I have a 2 kids (2 & 6 yrs. Old) and We started a family business 6 yrs ago… it’s been crazy hectic and it’s super difficult to find time to make any music at all.
I’ve found a couple of things helpful:
1.) couch jams with a single groove box or synth and some headphones are a great thing. I love spending a little time with my digitakt after the kids have gone to sleep to jot down a pattern or three and mangle some sounds. Something about the comfort of the couch makes it a much more relaxing affair. Also, if I jot down 2 or 3 related Rythms one night, it makes it seamless to be able to add upon that a week or two later when I want to tool around on a synth or a guitar or a bass or a piano (or any other instrument). I can make music successfully this way sometimes—starting with rhythms one week, and then riffing over it later.
2.) There is no shame in using your syntakt as a suuuuuper bare bones drum machine (for now). Get a simple but good sounding rhythm going fast, and leave it. Then you can Jam on top of it with your subharmonicon or DN for example and keep it real loose. I literally use my digitakt as a metronome sometimes haha. Sometimes you just need a backbeat to make noise and sounds over.
3.) perhaps switch up your view of these machines to “sound therapy vehicles” as opposed to instruments or groove machines.
I purchase a moog grandmother last November, and I view it is a “therapy session” when I sit down with it. Granted, it is a very “immediate” synth, but i don’t really set out to make music with it about half of the time—I just want to make sounds that please me (maybe this is a vote for going down the semi-mod route, although I think the DN and the syntakt could fill this roll if you switch up your expectation?).
Anyway, there is no wrong decision. just whatever you feel Best works for you. I know I get a lot of relaxation just tooling around and making music or just noise—personally I wish I got to do it a lot more.
Lately I have found myself wanting an acoustic guitar as the ultimate couch friendly pick-up-and-play noise maker. This is what I’ve been yearning for lately, so maybe I’m in a similar boat as you. Sometimes its a little daunting walking into my music barn with synths, drum machines, electric guitar and bass, lots of pedals and a laptop with a DAW on it (we are very, very lucky and fortunate). Sometimes not though—a lot of times it’s straight up amazing.
If you have a baby at home, there will come a time when the evenings will become a bit more restful when they started sleeping through the night 
I don’t have kids so my views might not mean much but my work and my other interests take up most of my time.
For me to make music I employ the following… if I don’t do this then I can go ages with out making stuff… in summary I remove all barriers that may prevent me wanting to make music - I find the depression of this comes from when you don’t make music, feel guilty, think you’ll pack it in etc so I make sure that doesn’t happen.
1.) only have gear that doesn’t impose on the room they are in - room still looks neat n tidy and can still be used for other things/hobbies/interests (so you keep coming back into the room often for various reasons, not just for music, doing so it keeps you looking at your instruments - lost time how many times I’ve gone into studio for something else and then just decided to make music)
2.) keep everything wired up. If I was to put anything away or not have it setup up with just power switch needed to make it work, it would then need even more time, more effort, more desire to set it all up. Therefore if stuff was boxed up or packed away I’d go months never playing them, too long you get rusty, being rusty makes you even less likely to pick the gear up as you know you’ll be longing to be as good as you used to be.
3.) when I do go to play, whether it’s my guitars or groveboxes, I always give myself an hour. I set a timer. 30mins to make up a track or riffs of song on a looper. Then I use 30mins to do various takes of the performance, I never program much just mute/unmute throw in effects as n when etc, then I just save the best take. Upload track. Delete recordings, never return. You end up with hundreds n thousands of tracks over the years, I always enjoy listening to them and it keeps making you want to do it again.
4.) I almost always never start from scratch, just always take last set of sounds and tweak them from there. I’ll only start from scratch if I know I’ve a whole day to myself. If I start from scratch I find inspiration harder to come by, if I take my last set of sounds, I’ll get new idea nearly straight away and then start tweaking then I’m sucked in.
I’ve done the above since the day I first picked up a guitar 24years ago and I’ve nearly a recording saved for every single week since. The only times I’ve ever put music down for periods and been down on it has been when I’ve moved house, gear packed away, need lots of free time to get it all setup, get your touch back etc so you keep putting it off n off n off etc.