Changing focus in practicing, no more transcriptions and exercises

Lately all I have been practicing is playing& listening back to what I've just played. I do this almost exclusively and nothing else. I feel like there is a strong reason for this

When I was a college student I used to practice a lot of exercises I made up for myself. A lot of that came from transcribing and wanting to be able to emulate some of the cool sounding ideas of other artists. I've transcribed 200s of pages of stuff memorized/learned to play along with records note-by-note on about 20 different solos.. But in the end I was not happy because when it came down to actually playing, I felt like I wasn't using any of these ideas musically. I felt a huge disconnect with the progress I made in my practice and the progress I made in my own playing.

I can say the same thing too.. I've done A LOT of metronome related exercises.. from putting the metronome on 2&4, every measure, every 2 measure, on every dotted quarter note, table of time..etc.. Again, I felt like that didn't translate into being able to swing/groove. Everything sounded like time was "kind of there" and sounded tentative.

I feel like these problems are being slowly addressed from listening, and listening really hard. And I seem to be fixing a lot of problems that was bothering me for a long time. It also made me realize how oblivious about my own playing.

Right now I don't feel like I need to learn anything new.. Fundamentally, I figured out what I need to figure out. I've transcribed enough Brad Mehldau, Kenny Kirkland..etc and I understand what's going on...and while learning that way is a great pursuit, in some ways it became an excuse for me to not listen to myself.

It's hard to describe, but I guess learn jazz at first is all about absorbing external information, but at one point I feel like it becomes more about what you do with it in your own playing... figuring out what works and what doesn't work. It's almost like that early training brought you there.. without the transcribing/exercise/metronome stuff, I wouldn't have had the ear and the rhythmic sense to hear whether what i am doing is right or not.

So i was wondering, has anyone had similar experiences with their own practicing?