I write this post as much as to provide motivation as seeking it myself. The reason is I'm myself having an increasingly harder time finding the motivation to sit down and press on. Here's my story:
Recently returned from a Sag A buckyball I find the Distant Worlds thread and join, full of anticipation. My dreams were overly fulfilled by the sheer masses of people flying together and meeting up along the pearly necklace of waypoints with many very interesting things to see.
You see, my kind of exploration is finding nebulae, white dwarfs, Wolf-Rayets and such like and jumping far and long to get there. ELWs and WWs not so much.
So we eventually got to the other side of the center of the galaxy. Welcome to the bleak lands. I had still many friends flying alongside, cheering us on towards Beagle Point. But the journey across up to 2-3 kylies before BP were dreary, I got through them only thanks to my ingame friends and this community. Especially you, Freebird. Thank you. The party at BP was not so much for me, I was away from home IRL for much of the time, though I managed a visit to the Treehouse where I met a few known cmdrs, that was exciting!
But now I hang alone in the black, some fifty lightseconds from a class A star, around 14 kylies from BP. I have just under 2 kylies to Camp 16 in the Sagittarius-Carina mission, going clockwise home via the galactic arm. I'm dead serious about going that way, I would be disheartened to resort to the direct beeline home. Selfdestruction is not an option. So here I am, fighting my own stubbornness, not being able to find the willpower to fire up the game for "just another kylie", because being a father to three with a lovely wife keeps me off the game, and so does the beautiful summerweather here in Scandinavia.
I have done some calculations: I've 86 kylies to go, doing 2 kylies an hour 2-3 times a week will get me home late autumn this year. It's a breathtakingly long time to get back and do something else! But as I've read this thread, I've picked up a few hints and tips, so I will dedicate some time now and then to CQC to get the pulse going.
So motivation: I have a project coming to a glorious end, a homebuilt control panel that fits nicely between my Thrustmaster T-Flight Hotas controllers, giving me the coveted 6th axis of freedom: the analog vertical axis for landing softly even on high-G worlds. It even has 10+ configurable switches to relieve the Hotas of some of the combination controls (hold this button and press that to get the next waypoint in route). And then the SC-mission, where I have plotted all the camps into the galactic map using custom waypoints, thank you very much, FD. That way I can abstract myself from the end goal and focus on the nearer flag, which is not as demotivating as gazing across to the other side of the galaxy.
So I guess I've already reached the solution for me to how to press on: get in touch with my exploring friends again, keeping my expectations for each session down. Even half a kylie is another small step along the remaining 86 kylie journey. And remembering to stop once in a while and scan something to break the jump-scoop-honk monotony.
TL;DR - get in contact with fellow explorers, break down your journey into smaller bits, get a grand vision on how you will travel and dare to deviate!
