We're going to get a bit real and talk about mortality now, so if that's not something you want in on, this chapter may not be for you.

I've been working on GCE for ten years now (my project to reimplement and build on Games Workshop's 1997 game Gorkamorka). Admittedly that work hasn't been constant and even when active it hasn't been a full time job. That said, it's been in my mental "in progress" column for a long time. Periodically it takes a big leap forward as I whip the contributors and myself into hitting a milestone of some kind.

When I was younger I had "finish painting Mordheim warband" on my to-do list for eight years. That one felt like longer though as it was between the ages of ~13 and 21, a time I would hope we all remember as taking forever to pass. I exaggerate that it sat on my to-do list, if I'm honest, for a while I put aside wargaming miniatures to do other stuff. I never got rid of the models but they were shelved for a long time and many of the projects I considered doing related to them were permanently dismissed, which was probably a good thing. That to-do list item had probably sat in my mind for at least two years though, and we're talking about eight miniatures. For whatever reason I let them sit in my head for several years driving me a little bit crazy.

As I write this, the average lifespan of a male in the UK is 84 years, and I'm nearly 40. I might well live longer - my grandfather was 97 and went through two world wars (and given that he was born in 1897 that makes him a Victorian!), but there's no certainty about how long I've got, even discounting the average. I'm not promised another forty years, after all. The musician I'm listening to as I write this, Sara Tavares, died at 45 of a brain tumour. She'd been diagnosed at 31 and lived with the knowledge of it for more than half of her adult life. What did that mean for the projects she took on? I couldn't say, but the music she created with her time was wonderful.

With that tolling bell of our own mortality ringing in our ears, how many ten year projects do we want to take on? How many of those do we have in us?

I've taken on a twenty year project, in a manner of speaking, as whilst writing this book my daughter was born. Of course, that doesn't go away (hopefully!) after twenty years, but she will eventually be taking full control of her own life experience and my duties as one of her primary guides will be at an end. This has also informed my perspective on which projects I want to take on during her life. Growing up I saw my father take on many projects and they would often consume him, which probably explains a lot about our relationship, and I would prefer to strike a better balance with my own daughter!

Dragging myself back to the point, taking on a project is saying "yes" to an idea. Hopefully that idea is something exciting, something that triggers passionate engagement. Saying "yes" to something like that is often very easy.

...too easy.

Therein lies the rub. If you're someone that can easily allow themselves to abandon projects, it's less of a concern, but for many of us it's not as easy as that. Calling time and cancelling a project can feel like a personal failure, or have an element of grief to it as a source of passion is allowed to die.

When I was a young lad I'd take on wargaming terrain projects with gusto, thinking that I'd somehow finish them. A few I did, but never enough for a decent battlefield. I'd often finish building them, but painting them was never a realistic prospect. Without someone with some experience and discipline in getting these things over the finish line, it just wasn't going to happen. It preyed on my mind a little but youthful enthusiasm drove me onwards, saying "yes" to new piece after new piece, excitedly making a start on yet another piece but very rarely enjoying the satisfaction of finishing, and even more rarely finishing a piece to the standard my imagination had hoped for when I started it.

Whilst there's something to be said for letting the muse of creativity take the wheel, this is very much a double-edged sword. Without an off-ramp for a project it can become a mental millstone, particularly if one hasn't realistically considered what it would take to reach the finish line. That's pretty much the problem - the inclination is to dive into a new project, one that could well stretch into the future for multiple years.

How many of those years-long projects do you have time for in the lifespan you have in front of you?

In my case, maybe three more ten year projects? A few more if I'm lucky? Ten three year projects?

I've been starting to look at these things, at least in part, through that lens, to help make it easier to say "no" when the muse begs me to take her hand.

Now that I've been a massive downer, let's pick the mood back up and explain why I actually find this to be beneficial. It boils down to the honeymoon period. Much like I talk about in another chapter ("Love the one you're with"), there's the excitement of a new project, one without all the roadblocks current ones have, but all projects of any significant complexity have those. The period before they set in isn't all that different between projects!

I'm reminded of my grandfather - I once saw a "home movie" of when my father was a small child and my grandfather looked almost as old then as he did when I was a small child. Proportionally a massive chunk of his life was being an old man.

Similarly in a long-running project one can spend ever more time overcoming hurdles, until it becomes what the majority of the time on the project has been! Bit of a bleak thought, really, and one that I try to carry with me when the muse comes calling (apologies if I'm overusing that metaphor, I'll find another!).

Most projects I undertake are ones I want to do because they'll be enjoyable in some way. Satisfying, fun, exciting, educational, and so on. How can I do more of that? Will this new potential project be balanced towards delivering a lot of the good stuff in the short to medium term or will it, plausibly, lean far more towards long-term, slow burn?

To put it another way, the opportunity cost of taking on the multi-year ones is high and I try to let that knowledge balance my decisions. Optimising for positive outcomes? I don't know if that's how corporate droids put it, but something like that.

There's another angle to this as well - material and tool acquisition. Every additional thing I bring into my workspaces needs to be stored, worryingly often for years. Someone asks if I want a thing, or there's an opportunity to buy for an extremely low price, and it's so easy to say "yes".

How long do I want to have to work around that material? What storage space is it taking up that might be better used for something more immediate? Yes, the price might have been good (or non-existent, mmmm) but would the price to acquire it closer to when I'm going to use it be worth the lack of overheads, both physical and mental?

This is particularly true of materials with a shelf-life. Many of us as makers know the pain of having to throw something away because it's gone bad before we had a chance to use it. It's often made worse by the fact that we were probably aware that the clock was ticking on the item and it created negative feelings around not having used it yet.

I'm not sure if it's even worse when a material doesn't go bad. I've got various miniature pieces for detailing a build that I've had for twenty years. They've moved about a thousand miles, up and down the UK, and for what? I've still not used the damn things! Textured styrene sheeting that I bought in 2000 still has to be moved aside to reach the 1mm stuff I actually use regularly!

So these days I try to ensure I interrogate myself about whatever it is that I'm considering adding to my collection. It helps that I've become better at getting rid of things but I'm extremely wary about continuing to make the same mistakes by saying "yes" to things I really shouldn't, and you should probably too.