Long time bored/burned out approach vs fresh and new. Reminds me of myself when I started playing ED - I was so "wow" and "awe" and didn't get why other forum members are so salty. Few months later I got it as well.
Same with you OP, but with Skyrim. It's a great game, story rich, plenty of places to see, many things to do, various ways to achieve your goals. Dumb waaagh barbarian berserker os sneaky thief approach? Or maybe reflect all shield mage? Everything is possible. But after initial wow and awe things get boring, repetitive and not interesting anymore. Oh great, another letter from a friend, another Draugr dungeon with another Word Wall for a shout that you won't use (fus-ro-dah ftw and for any occasion).
So you did Companions story, got that fancy berserker theme set, not approach Mage College and want to do it properly. Enchanting is low, magicka is low, low amount of weak spells. Time to grind for flowers and fishes to make potions. Oh, Alchemy is also low, need tons of flowers or Giant toes to actually progress. Sooner or later you'll realize grind, or "extensive material gathering and hunt" takes more time than actual story progression.
Luckily Skyrim is single player experience, has console so in times of big frustration you can just "player.additem <item_code> 100" and be done. Cheating for sure but having game beaten few times already I can have pure fun out of it.
Don't get me wrong, Skyrim is great and initially feels more rewarding than ED, it's easier to switch roles and finding stuff is easier. But if you want to get somewhere far it still requires some "grinding".
Hm... so how then you call a road block that prevents me from enjoying my activity simply due to the fact that I can't enjoy is since I don't have access to it?
For example, I want to enjoy big scale trading and earning millions per cargo run for the sake of seeing million profit for I like big numbers. But I can't since I don't have 250M Cr for a Cutter + I lack the military rank to unlock it. So i'm flying Adder, doing low grade missions and earning 20k Cr per run, advancing in ranks. At current speed it will take few months before I can start enjoying my activity.
So how do you call everything beforehand?
Above is just example, not everyone is as low demanding as you. Luckily I have both the money and rank for a Cutter so I can actually enjoy my activity but getting to that point was pure grind. I HAD to dedicate toward activity I didn't enjoy, I had to do it repetitively for extended period of time. Afaik this is the definition of grind.
But oh, it's self imposed, right? Instead of enjoying Cutter I should enjoy small time Adder and Cutter will come in time? Eh...