I'm thinking about games every single day of my life. I think it's somewhere in my bones, a goblin that wants to be silly and crunch up ideas and digest them into new ideas, a goblin that likes rolling dice and playing cards and acting like the world outside is irrelevant.

That goblin controls most of what I do day to day. It takes strategic discipline to get to my day job, to cook and clean up after myself, to spend time with loved ones and connect. My game loving bone goblin only wants me thinking about games, when to play the next one, what game ideas to toy with, what other game loving goblins are saying about games on the internet. It also loves to Watch The Number Go Up.

This goblin, I have long accepted, is a part of me and who I am. It will not be exorcised, it will not move out. I have to learn to live with this goblin, and I'm happy to accommodate it, as long as it respects my boundaries.

Life is tragically short. As a human being we can reasonably expect 80 years or so. A significant portion of this time is focused on survival, acquiring the means to function in the society that has existed long before I have. The rest of this time must be rationed, portioned among the things I love. Friends, family, art. That time, forever, is deliriously coveted by the game loving bone goblin. 

I read a book called 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. I thought it would be helpful to think about time management and develop some tools to manage my life better. I walked away with a dread about spending my time left here on earth meaningfully. Meaningful is, at its essence, subjective, but to me it rocked the question how many games will I realistically get to play in the remainder of my life. So here is some rudimentary math that whizzed past my head.

Assuming I live to about 76, I have 4000 weeks. Maybe more, maybe less. I'm almost 30, so I have maybe 2500 weeks left. Assuming I never suffer a fatal accident, or suffer an illness that prevents me from doing so, I will likely play a roleplaying games for the rest of my life. 

To quell the screaming of my goblin, I schedule two games a week pretty consistently. They get canceled about half the time, averaging to one game a week. Each game is 3 hours or so. 

2500 sessions of play seems like a lot (and it is, I likely won't reach that number), but how many Games does that actually add to? What can I reasonably expect to take on?

Some games call for single session events, but others, to fully experience them, call for multi session seasons lasting anywhere from three sessions to dozens. Usually around 8 or so, but obviously different games call for different levels of investment. 

So where is the problem? 100s of potential game seasons lie ahead. 2500/8 = 312.5, so roughly 300 full seasons. 

THAT'S NOT ENOUGH says game loving bone goblin.

I backed 4 games on Kickstarter last year and discovered at least a dozen on Itch.io that I want to explore. I have a trove of hundreds of PDFs I've read, at least some of them are interesting and exciting enough to put a game together for. I wrote one game, and am writing three more. 

There are going to be more games on Kickstarter. There are going to be more games on Itch. There are going to be more games I want to write and play.

How do you prioritize one game over another? Going by gut intuition is great, play what you're excited about and only what you're excited about. But there will never be enough time to play everything I'm excited about, especially when there is a constant stream of cool new stuff. Always. Every day, every hour, some interesting person is writing interesting things that are worthy of my attention, of my time.

Playing shorter games is nice, lots of games are lowering their expectation of how much you need to invest to get everything you can out of them. Shorter games can be more memorable, push limits faster, and can get you excited about other adjacent games. Making shorter games, too, lowers the expectations on yourself! But even if it is a small game, maybe you want to play it more than once? A few times, a few different groups of people?

Does this mean I shouldn't play long form? Or do I need to make sacrifices in my life to make more room for them?

Every time you play a game, you are choosing it over every other game in your library. You are choosing it over every other possible activity you could be doing. This game should be worth your fleeting time. Every game should count. There are no bad games, but if you aren't enjoying it, stop and play something else. Your time is too short.

Play alone, play with friends, play with strangers. Play everything in your library that excites you and delete the rest. Play your new games as soon as you can, make more room for the cool shit down the road. Prioritize happiness.