I'm sadly falling out of love with World building...
● Reality has been catching up to me in ways I don't want it to. I have a job where I have a lot of free time on my hands due to being the only one in the building, but more than ever, I spend that time watching YouTube and doom-scrolling rather than working on the worlds I have built, like I used to. I feel like this has to do with me feeling like I'm wasting my time building out worlds that nobody else will ever really see or care about outside of social media, such as this sub. That's on top of the fact that I'm now a father and have just been taking on more responsibility than ever in my life. The feeling that I'm wasting my time with this is a thought that I don't want to have, but it's growing stronger every week despite how much fun it used to give me.
● I take my world-building seriously, despite the fact that I'm the only one who will ever know about what I'm building. There's nothing that's ever going to change this; it's just the way I am. Being able to make sure my concepts are airtight and have competent continuity is something that I used to take pride in because it made my effort that I would put into world-building feel more validated. But now it's feeling like a chore, especially with how much I have to struggle with organizing my notes when making outlines of my worlds. Making proper outlines is a real pain in the ass because I've used Samsung Notes as my primary app to line things out, but recently the app has become so much more user-unfriendly and tedious. Trying to fight with the formats and default settings, I feel like I'm focused more on getting the ideas to be readable in the first place instead of brainstorming like I want to.
● I'm trying to convince myself that I'm not outgrowing this because that is an absurd statement, as there are people in their 60s and older creating amazing concepts, whether as a career or in their free time. But above all else, I'm just exhausted with my ideas. I know that might not make sense or that it's contradictory, but I am honestly just so exhausted trying to filter through these 15-plus ideas I have in my head to pick the ones that are most worthy of actually going through the painstaking, tedious effort of making outlines and design documents for them.
● I'm just too tired, I have to spend more energy than ever on the most basic physical tasks due to raising my daughter and being the one that watches her mostly while also working graveyard shifts. There are a thousand plus things that I need to do rather it's fixing the house or cooking for my wife or keeping up with my work quality at my job, Etc. World-building doesn't feel like an escape from all of that anymore, and I can't figure out why. Of course, it seems like I've figured it out because I'm listing my thoughts right now to you all, but there's a feeling inside of me that says these reasons are not good enough for you to abandon six years of hard thinking and organizing on ideas that you used to take pride in. But the apathy, if that's the right word to use, has overwhelmed any excitement that I used to feel for world-building, that exciting feeling that creates a tingling sensation whenever I would get a brand-new idea. That pretty much never happens anymore, despite the fact that I come up with new ideas. That feeling never arrives anymore, and I'm starting to realize my ideas are getting more and more generic. They're branched off of some sort of other idea from a TV show or a song or a game or whatever I may have been directly or passively exposed to, and it makes any of the newer ideas feel so much less original and personal to me.
● I have thought of one solution to fix this, and that would be to actually learn how to draw and start visualizing my worlds , but knowing me , I'm going to fall into the same problems of being too tired and exhausted with too many things already on my plate in the real world to spend time even if it's free time at work where I'm stuck at, to learn how to draw. And I know what some of you might be thinking while reading this if you even made it this far in the post which would be astounding and if so thank you, but you're probably thinking "oh you're just being lazy with it you have to commit to and it's going to be hard but that's the process" and I wouldn't even be offended if that's what you thought, I even believe that myself but how can I spend effort and energy into my World building and try to double down on that, well I'm failing to maintain my house or my job or doing anything more with my baby than just sitting watching cartoons together cuz I don't have the energy to run around the house with her. All of that obviously takes priority over writing down fantasies.
● But it still hurts not to get that exciting tingling feeling anymore when I have a new idea. It's a shame that I rot my brain scrolling while listening to YouTube instead of pushing my imagination. But no matter how much I've tried this past week after taking a long break from world-building, I still can't get back into it. Imagination is like a fire; perhaps my fire has faded.