Forums » Smalltalk » Motivation battery running low :(

Just for clarification; I enjoy all of the Roleplays that I have going on!


Now for my thing/word vomit/rant. Alright, so like I said above I enjoy all of my roleplays that I have going on; one way or another. But that being said, my motivation has been tanking hard core; at most I can get one reply out every like 1-2 days if I’m feeling on the better side of things. I feel terrible that the flow of the Roleplay is always being interrupted because of my inability to pump out response after response consecutively and I know that my stable roleplay partners are super nice and understanding in that regard (I’m super thankful for them.)

But there is another thing that’s making me feel rather bad…Even when I’m at my lowest; motivation wise. There’s always 2 or 3 roleplays that I always get excited for and pump out replies one after another; to be fair the response length on all three of them are relatively short at like three-four sentences each. Even so, I feel like I’m a bad Roleplay partner since I favoritize those roleplays when I have a long list of roleplays that I still need to reply to. (It isn’t actually that long, it’s only about 3 or 4 but they have pretty lengthy reply lengths to them.)

Uh…I don’t actually know what the point of writing this all is, since I’m just complaining about my own inability to keep up with the number of Roleplays I have and how I favoritize some of them more than others. I suppose if you actually read through this then I appreciate you reading my word vomit.

I’ve been in that same boat before and it sucks! Sometimes I feel like I’ve overwhelmed myself by taking on too many rps. Don’t ever be afraid to take a break if you need it! Sometimes your brain needs a little recovery.

That's exactly how I feel at the moment! Like, I know I can keep up with the pretty active ones more or less (When my motivation is at it's normal level.) But it's the ones that are on hiatus/semi-hiatus that add up slowly over time.

"I'm responding fine an enthusiastically this this/these specific RPs, and therefore I am a bad person/RPer if I make others wait for long or end early." Is that in the ballpark of what you're feeling with that second part? I know that thoughts/feelings like that can be insidious little things that can manage to sound totally reasonable.

Fact is, though... it happens. It happens a lot. And it can be understandably difficult to sort out how best to deal with it.

First, in this context, it's okay to have favorites, and it's okay to to give those favorites more focus. It's not much different from having a favorite book or a favorite show; you're engaging with something for the sake of fun. Because it involves at least one other person, it is still good to maintain some communication, whether that's just letting folks know you need a break or to slow down, or (if manageable) maintaining a bit of OOC chat to help keep things warm while letting your creativity rest a bit. You are not a bad person for having plots you're more into or people you vibe with better.

Aside from generally maintaining connections (and potentially even ending up with more plot fodder!), another reason to consider communicating with someone beyond just letting them know you need a break is that if those being put on hold have a way to be aware of your other games still running along fine, that has potential to sting a lot, and chatting can help to ease that. Ideally everyone will be understanding of the situation regardless, but what a person feels has a tendency to ignore what a person knows or understands. So when reasonable, it never hurts to have a little reassurance, like your opening line there.

There are, admittedly, times when it's better to power through something in some way. For example, if the issue is actually a dull spot in the game, that won't resolve until it's addressed (and good news: if it's too dull to play through and no one can think of something to spice it up, it's 100% okay to discuss using a time skip, possibly with a summary of what's important, to get back to the more fun parts). Very often, though, especially if we have a lot going on, a break (or at least a load reduction) is the thing to do. And the better you can manage your needs, generally the shorter any burnout will be.

And something I've learned, in case it comes up for you: things on the backburner can absolutely still be draining you. I've definitely dealt with times where it wasn't enough to just take things easier for a bit, or take a little break. If I'm stuck feeling guilty or something every time I remember I have a thing waiting on me, that's still draining me and preventing my recovery. There can be a huge difference between "let's put this on hiatus" and "it's possible we could come back to this some day in the future, but at least for now I need to call it quits."