The "aesthetic" involved is purely a side effect of focus, on personal creativeness and learning. There's no aesthetic goal being pursued, as in the case of using fine dishes and caring about dress.
Many of us long to take a break from obligations and sink into a deep state of singular flow on our creative hobbies, whether it be software, building a ship in a bottle, working on that car rusting in the garage, etc. To be able to take a full day, ignore everything else, and spend it on exactly one passion project is a personal, internal joy; not one predicated on pretensing up to match externally presented standards.
It is a genuinely poisonous idea, and one we should all seek to rid ourselves of, that other people do not really enjoy the things they seem to enjoy, but are instead involved in some kind of status pantomime that we like to call pretension.
By thinking this way, we misunderstand and alienate ourselves from other people, and we cut ourselves off from experiences that we might really enjoy. Given that we all only have a limited time on this planet, that's a high price to pay indeed.
Don't mean to jump on you specifically; I just found the use of the word "pretentious" in this thread very triggering. =p
The way you are presenting it, and what caused you to present it, shows it is a pretense. That does not stop it being other things, but it is a pretense.
Many of us long to take a break from obligations and sink into a deep state of singular flow on our creative hobbies, whether it be software, building a ship in a bottle, working on that car rusting in the garage, etc. To be able to take a full day, ignore everything else, and spend it on exactly one passion project is a personal, internal joy; not one predicated on pretensing up to match externally presented standards.