I like to say “I am not a patient man” — misquoting and doing a bad imitation of Forrest Gump — but that isn’t exactly true. I have a lot of patience for people — especially people closest to me, or those I am teaching or coaching. Life has a lot of ups and downs, easy times and overly-busy times, and I am usually fine taking those things as they come and dealing with whatever is at hand to get through it. Lord knows, last year was a great reminder of that for me.
Where I do have problems with patience is on creative projects that I’m working on. Everything always takes longer to actually do than I’d like it to. At the same time, I don’t like to rush things just to get them done either, because I’d rather they were “right” than “fast.” So, that means I simply have to pay for that conundrum by burning through a little frustration … This certainly applies to my games, but also to things like around-the-home projects, writing, learning to play musical instruments (I *will* get better at guitar … at some point), working on fun projects with the kids, preparing events or curriculum for the kids I teach as a volunteer at my church, etc.
And yet, I don’t really want — or expect — any of that to change. It’s all part of a very full life of this very fortunate guy. Everything gets ordered by priority (and then by convenience 😉 ). A lot of time the creative items — and my games work falls into this category — are simply too far down the priority list, and I run out of hours and energy in a day.
At the top of the priority list is my wife and kids, of course. (It’s simple, but the way it needs to be.) Followed closely by the rest of my family and close friends. These are the things that make life the best it can be … so they will always come first. My day job also ranks highly, because it gives us the ability to do all of these things we like to do during our non-office-hours. Also, that volunteer work I mentioned above is very important to me for a number of reasons — some because (I hope) it does some good for others, but also because it’s good for me as a person.
So, this means that when family events become thick on the calendar, work trips get added-in, and the approaching end of a school year means big-deal events need planning and content for the classes … then things farther down the list go on hold for a while. For example: I’ve only picked up that guitar once in the past many, many months.
I guess this is a weird, overly-wordy excuse/apology for being very quiet from my MWG corner of the world, and for having to push the schedule back for Tales of Danger #1. But, now that summer has arrived, I see the calendar clearing up a bit, and I should be able to get back in stride on the games front.
Watch this website, along with my Twitter and Facebook feeds again … they should start picking up. 🙂
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