Yeah, I came back to it now that I have access to my good computer.
I started from scratch: deleted my many, many gigabytes of mods and focused on only one character. Then, I went to the
Nexus and downloaded the essentials (Requiem, Frostfall, Realistic Needs and Diseases, among others) and got to playing. Man, when you really play it right, Requiem makes Skyrim exponentially more fun.
Generally, I can't play Skyrim without mods, I was one of those people that bought the game at launch and, upon playing it, responded with "huh," since I was expecting a lot more than I got (but I've spoken about this in great detail before, Oblivion 1.25 and all that jazz). Back then, there were no mods and, while we knew they were coming, what could be done with the game at the time was very limited.
Now, you have mods like Moonpath to Elsweyr and Falksaar which add entirely new regions to the game and mods like Frostfall and Realistic Needs that make the game feel more immersive than you could ever imagine. I don't exactly know why I'm just having fun with all this now (well, I had fun before, but not THIS much fun)- I've played with a plethora of mods before, but if I had to guess, it comes from the fact that I've taken a lot more care in selecting what would be added to the game. It's been a fun romp.
And on a side note, what I feel is one of the greatest mods, Requiem, is hard as all hell. It requires a lot more thinking, strategy, and forethought, and coupled with Frostfall and RND (which, the three combined, make the game incredibly immersive. More brutal, but a lot more fun), will have you always conscious of your character's well-being. I started out with my player saves in the 200s, and with just one character over about a week and a few days, I've reached into the thousands.