The Need For What's Next

Or: Compulsively Thrusting Myself Into New Doing

My TTRPG is out the door, in digital at least. It’s been more than a year, at this point, piecing it all together. From Google Doc to full-fledged, 290+ pages of Core Rulebook… In digital, at least. Hardcovers are on the way.

Being done with anything is a problem for me. I want to do more.

So, I do. More. For better and for worse.

When I was in my teens, maybe my early 20s. I remember my father mentioning that some of best times in his life were when he and my mother were just scraping by, and trying to make ends meet.

The constant pressure, and uncertainty were matched by the reality that no one is going to hold your hand through this life. That pressure breeds a special kind of comfort. The comfort of knowing that you are capable of shaping the world around you, in spite of the circumstances. Because you’ve proven it, again, and again.

It’s a false confidence, maybe. After all, no one is going to be able to stop a piece of aircraft debris from landing on their head, or a flood from destroying their basement, or Amazon from laying off as many employees as the bottom line permits.

Buuuuut, the doing is important. The idea that you can choose what to aim your attention at. It’s empowering.

Mine is usually aimed at creative endeavors. I love it.

The shadow side of that desire, for myself and many others, is that we have so many ideas that discipline is needed to keep yourself from pursuing them. Just finish the one thing, then move on.

Wicked difficult, right?

Setting aggressive deadlines usually gets me from A to B. I try to keep myself beholden to my audience. I’ll tell folks that “I’m aiming to get an update out in the next two weeks,” and then I shoot for it. It doesn’t always need to work out that way, plans change, priorities shift, it’s all good. The point is that you care enough about the deadline to get invested in achieving it.

You can self-sabotage this way too, though. I fell prey (self-inflicted) to this a lot during my time on PlanetSide 2. When your deadlines are too tight, and your goals are too ambitious, the course corrections you need to make usually end up undercutting your goals altogether. Sometimes, doing less can achieve more.

It’s a rough balancing act.

Now that Distal is out the door, I’m in kind of a wait-and-see mode. I plan to keep building Distal out, if there is audience-enough for it. I’ve been reaching out to folks about the game; I have some guides and monthly content that needs written; and there are plenty of book-keeping activities (yuck, running a business,) that need to be upheld… but it’s a lull. A void. A test of patience.

Where’s the catharsis? Where’s the relaxation? Where’s the joy, I guess?

Was there supposed to be a payoff for being done with something? It’s so funny that I’ve never felt that. I don’t think so, at least.

People will sometimes ask those kinds of questions… “It must feel good to finally get that out into the world,” and I’ll limply reply with agreeance. It’s not a lie. I do feel good, I am glad that it’s out in the world; I do want to see it in the hands of other people, because I enjoy talking about it and seeing them light up with excitement.

But the delivery? The “done?” That’s not it. It’s not a celebration.

It’s just, Tuesday. Or whatever.

More often, it’s actually the other direction. Where I feel like I’m missing something. An emptiness, like when you finish a good read… or Mass Effect 2. You’re at the end of something you’ve been enjoying for a good long time.

But it’s the act of doing, that was the fun part.

So we go ahead. Plunging headlong into some new endeavor, to ride that same high. To find that missing something that makes us who we are.

-Wrel