I hear you man. I have some friends in LA that have become DIE-HARD GURPS fans. They're aggro on me for never having run it for them before I left, and swear to me I'd love it (and I believe them - which is funny I have a Steve Jackson story I'm *totally* embarrassed about that concerns these very same friends that used to *****HATE***** GURPS.)
But yeah - it's a comfort factor that has its own gravity. That actually is what keeps me moving. I am totally down with sticking with what works. But having grown out of D&D after decades of play and watching my friends be so utterly devoted to it, I felt it kept us from checking out other stuff. Now I'm leery about doing that again. It's certainly not black and white - but I like to always have something "new" on tap.
My list shows fairly clearly, I'm dropping a LOT of money on Savage Worlds - it's not going anywhere for me. But I'm always trying to sneak new stuff in there. I'm trying to Up the Crunch too. Mythras/Runequest, Warhammer Fantasy 2e is in our near future. GURPS is a very real darkhorse chance to land on the menu.
Ha, oh how I'd love to hear that embarrassing Steve Jackson story!
I totally empathize though. I had the RPG equivalent of ADD *really bad* around a decade ago, I kept hucking new systems around like I was playing hot potato. At one time, I had convinced my players to convert an existing campaign to a new system *three* separate times, all within a handful of sessions of each other... ahem. Still embarrassed about that. My brother got so mad at me he refused to play or listen to any of my system pitches until I nut up, picked a system and rolled with it (which... ended up being GURPS, as the system I've had the most success running over the years). During that period and shortly thereafter I was having an affair with Fate... which as it turns out, I actually came to hate.
Introduced a couple newbies to roleplaying with it and ran into one of them a few years after the fact; they fucking LOVE it and it's the only thing they run. Go figure!
Anyway, I calmed down for a few years, but recently I've been getting an itch to try some different stuff; SWADE, Mythras (and M-space), Everywhen/BoL and I've even been peeking longingly into some OSR stuff (although I'm still not entirely sold or convinced I'll ever return to anything D20, not that I have any enmity towards the stuff). I'm sort of heading on the opposite trajectory as you in that I'd like to try something a bit lighter and see how it treats me. I know I'll eventually come back around for more GURPS at some point as I always have, but I'd enjoy stretching my legs.
Whether I can sell it to a group or not, I'm a bit of a collector at least with PDFs (physical space I have to be more conservative about) so I'm keeping an eye firmly on any new SWADE releases...