Valar morghulis
I’m led to believe it is possible for an Arduino to behave like a keyboard when connected via USB. See Arduino in Java sites for the post that taught me this recently. I’ve not done it myself yet but it sounds interesting. I’m not sure if there’s a library that’ll let you make an Arduino behave like a joystick though.
https://www.arduino.cc/reference/en/language/functions/usb/keyboard/
I’m also 50 but I don’t seem to have problems retaining things… Yet! 
How would you see someone helping with this?
Bernie