Time. Time is always the issue. As you grow older, time becomes a very valuable resource. I end up setting myself aims such as "Once I have time, I will do xyz." Once the time comes for me to have "time", I cannot set my arse down and do whatever I wanted to do and squander the precious little time I have by watching the same youtube videos over and over again.
I accepted that, because I know me well enough now to understand that it is part of my recovery process. I need that "time", too. Time to sit and look blankly into space and not think about anything at all, while going through a routine that I have done millions of times before. It is just part of my rhythm.
It then feels all the better, when I actually achieve something with my time. In this case, I finished Act 4 of 5 acts of my roleplaying campaign. 57 sweet pages of a plot that I was worried would never see the light of day. I have no idea about the quality of the storyline or whether my players "will dig it", but it feels good having finished it.
There are many ideas floating around, but very rarely one comes to complete fruition, because people are not willing to put the time in. There we are again with time. Just too little to go around. Finishing something is just as valuable as starting it.
This 4th Act took me a damn long time. Why? In my mind, I already told the story. The fun process, the one where the story is made up, where the sheet is blank and you do not know what it will look like in the end has been over for more than a year now. The only thing I still need to do now is fill in the blanks with details. I hate that part. I hate drawing up maps of houses, I hate describing the interior of a room, I hate thinking up reasons why a particular guardsmen happens to be on a 30 minute rotation. It just does not interest me.
The reason why it does not interest me is, because the players tend to fill this space up with their ideas while playing. They may not always do this knowingly, but when a player says, he would like his character to do something in particular and I think it would be cool, I just let him, by conjuring up the necessary prop out of thin air. It makes the process interactive and fun and you spend some quality time with your old friends from school who you do not see often enough, because we're all going through the daily grind.
So as I said, I dislike the last part. I let it drag on. Then you lose track of where you were exactly and 4 months later, it is even harder to get back in, since I did not know where to start. Well, I finally did it. I wrote little letters that will tell the characters what they need to get. I wrote shitty little maps that I stole partially from video games (not that I will ever publish this stuff), hell I even wrote descriptions of rooms (oh god how I hate that part). It feels good. 57 pages of good. I am sure, I will notice some logic holes or things that I left out, but I will fill those as I go along. It is the easy part. Making things up wildly as I go along.
Now onto Act 5. The one that is not yet written... Apart from the Ending. I wrote the ending at the beginning so that I know where the characters should end up...
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