Speaking as one who comes from a place with lots of pebble beaches, I think you get it right.

I have this thing where I'm staring at the pebbles so hard, sifting through them, folding them back and forth with my hand, it becomes all-absorbing.

You know you have other things to do, but the seeking of the treasure, the hunting for the thing you don't even know what it looks like but it might be there captures you like some errant process taking up all the compute.

Maybe it's that there are so many possibilities, so many pebbles, maybe it's that any one of them could be real treasure, it ends up being a thing that takes over.

It's a good analogy. Hadn't connected the dots before. Thank you.