Let's be frank. Some of us are adults with jobs, some of us are in college, school, whatever, yet we still enjoy logging onto the guild and enjoying our favorite RPs. My question is this.

How the fuck do you manage this shit?

I only ask this because I tend to big myself down with several RPs from time to time (don't judge me), but I also work a full 40 week at the DQ on nights. I have to quit half my rps because I lose interest or I just don't have time for it anymore. Also, I've been getting bad writers block lately and can barely get a post out, which in turn hurts all the others I RP with. So I ask you working people, how do you manage it?

-Sincerely: "NO YOU CANNOT HAVE EXTRA FRIES WITHOUT PAYING FOR THEM!"

Heck, I still RP'ed when I worked 84 hours a week. I just made sure to prioritize the important roleplays. I figured out what I wanted to post before I did so, sat down, and did them quickly. I read before I left for work, and posted when I got back. They were lesser quality, but at least I could keep up.

I'm always in slower Rp's though, that helps. Fast daily Rps? Yeah, I don't know.

It's just good time management. I don't join more than what I can handle. I have other hobbies and I'd rather write for 1 RP that I enjoy instead of 5 where I'm only crazy about 2. It doesn't feel difficult to manage at all.

I have a massive mix of things I do, typically coming at the cost of sleep. Roleplay's another one of them on the list.

It's fundamentally a matter of time management. Set certain things for certain times, know how your week is going to go. Usually I'm decent at it, though this past month not so much.

A quick way for me to get in "the mood" so to speak is to watch a movie, read a book, etc. that relates to whatever I'm going to write about. Getting the visual in my head helps get the mantra going; without it I've had spells where I had no idea what to write at all. If this works for you or not, who knows; perhaps give it a go. Video games can also stir it up; I've been able to very slowly chug with a back-burner roleplay by playing a game that is directly relevant to it.

I've gotten into historical gangster shows, of all things as of late. I suspect that's what has been grabbing most of my inspiration for other topics.

I only just started working full time, so I haven't been handling things well. Thankfully I work in Education, and the school year ends in two weeks. I'm actually on a roleplaying hiatus until then because I need to learn to be an EFFICIENT ADULT who can balance this bullshit.

AND FINAL FANTASY XV CAME OUT YESTERDAY ON TUESDAY AND I JUST HAVE TO SIT HERE AND STARE AT IT BECAUSE I HAVE NO TIME FOR GAMES OR FUN OR A LIFE.

EDIT: 'Yesterday on Tuesday'??? Idek (Yesterday was Wednesday)

I just arrange it so I reply to one or two games a night, and since I do Advanced, they're moving along at a slow but steady pace. Not replying for a few days usually is perfectly fine.

I notice your name in the Free section a lot when I click on the home page. Maybe join fewer RPs and try a few Casual ones with relaxed expectations? If you're a member of several speed posting RP with dozens of posts a night, you're not going to have any free time that isn't roleplaying.

Depending on whether or not having a 'job' is defined by getting payed to work, I might not belong here. Not that I give a shit if people don't respect the work I do when I work harder than most people who get payed a fucking fortune.

I more or less work sixteen hours a day (this includes weekends) and sometimes have to do all-nighters due to things piling up, dealing with a massive backlog of past notes while contending with new ones as they come. I don't really have time to game, or watch stuff, or even just go out for a walk sometimes to be blunt with you. This site more or less sits in the background while I work on everything, just as a tab I can browse around every so often and sometimes take breaks to reply in various threads.

I think it's really all a matter of time management for the most part, like people here are suggesting, as well as the type of role-plays you're taking part in. I don't really do role-plays that move faster due to being an 'advanced' role-player (even when I'm in 'casual' forum I tend to only take part in the role-plays that allow me to post in more detail), so - as said previously - the pace is usually slower. The IC for one of my role-plays here hasn't even started yet despite us having a handful of OOC pages now.

If you're having time issues, I second the notion that you should cut down the number of role-plays you're part of to only those you truly care about -- honestly, I'd do this even if I did have free time, and I've had to pull out of a few role-plays here that I considered joining (but never actually did officially join) simply due to time problems.

Mother of three, business owner here.

Personally I treat it like a job. I have a posting schedule I stick to and act like keeping up with my posts is the same as brushing my teeth, getting the kids on the bus, or filling an order.

Just as I have responsibility to my family to take care of this or that, or a client pays to have an order filled - I give my word to post regularly; I do it.

To find balance, I plan out. I have a schedule, I multi task, take quick notes so when I need to reply I am ready and not trying to read huge blocks to push out a post before bed, I write down ideas that pop in my head randomly.

It all works to make it easier to keep up. Kids, work, 6 rps to gm. It gets done. Granted, I have been at this over a quarter of a century. Trust me, it gets easier over time.

When I was at the top of my game, I was doing full time college courses, working 2-4 eight hour shifts a week, playing in a tabletop RPG campaign on Saturdays, GMing another tabletop campaign on Sundays, sporadically updating a webcomic and still occasionally posted in forum role plays. I did it because role playing is what I enjoy the most. When I'm in a good campaign, it's the highlight of the week.

Wouldn't recommend living that life, though. I slept five hours a night and exercised never. I gained 20kg in two years...

But a full time job and role playing? No problem.

Weirdly enough, at the end of 2012 when I was working full time and going to school full time simultaneously, I got more writing than I do now, at a time where my hours oscillate between 50 hours a week to no hours a week depending on the time of year. I think one thing having a busy life does is it gets you into a tight schedule, which helps keep you writing.

@Rusalka

If you approach role playing and the guild as a hobby rather than another obligation than making it work with real life is quite simple. I personally have a fiancee, two kids, and another on the way as well as a full time job. I have other hobbies such as Warhammer 40K, playing video games, writing outside of the guild, and a few others. Balancing them is simple really. First of all, don't bite off more than you can chew. If some threads are moving too fast for you to manage or you simply have way to many threads going at once - back out of a few. There is no point in trying to keep up with 20 different threads when you can truly only manage 5 well. Me personally, I keep it to no more than five tops but prefer two or three. But all the threads I participate in have fairly reasonable schedules. My own personal D&D thread has about a 7 day wait period between posts. Another I participate in is 10 days. And the combat thread I am playing in is about every four to five days. I think that is how you manage. Look at it as a hobby, so you will get to it w hen you get to it. And make sure everyone is on the same page. Let them know you can only post once a week and most people will be understanding.

The fact of the matter is that most roleplayers who use this site work. I include those attending school, college, university, etcetera in that estimation. Working while also roleplaying is not a special, unique qualifier - despite how people might treat it otherwise.

The simple answer is to make the time for it that you want to make for it. It can be tempting to approach it on a 'do what I can with whatever time I happen to have' stand, but that tends to make for inconsistent posting. If you treat roleplaying as a hobby, do it during your free time. If you are a touch more serious about the whole affair, plan ahead and make time for it in your schedule.

Either way, only devote as much time to it as it is important to you. Take a step back and evaluate how much it means to you. Do not try to write according to your expectations - write according to how rewarding and enriching the experience is to you. If that makes any sense.

3 roleplays maximum.

That is my limit and I stick by it. Any more than that and I just can't participate to the best of my abilities

Writings a lot easier to me and less time consuming than other hobbies. With a game or piano, it's a time investment. With writing, I can literally write 1 sentence every hour on the hour and eventually come up with a single paragraph with less than 10 seconds dedicated to each sentence. Even when doing live collabing, you don't have to focus on it all the time. Writing is basically a building block hobby. You construct bits and pieces at a time, way easier to handle.

@Rusalka

1.
Pacing. Back in the days of yore, there was said to be roleplays that only moved at a pace of perhaps 6 posts a week, and had up to 14 players upon it. Think about that.

To make such a roleplay work, a lot of legwork went into a post. Offline-legwork. Sometimes this involved printing-out the last page of the RP, chucking it into a binder, and perusing it like a book as you write a cliff's-note on how you plan to summarize all that in your next post because there's a chance yours will be at the head of that page.

Also, sort things out before they start, an OOC arguement over a post you made will waste time you don't have. If someone ninja's your post, be prepared to edit.

2.
Don't be afraid to dual-wield characters/subplots. Having two characters off their own ways doubles your chances of being able to post something in an RP, and may be just enough to get you to roll right through writer's block.

3.
Quality is better than quantity. This applies to players as it does to posts. Have ones that'll stick with you for the RP, get to know the quircks of each others' characters and have an established "continuity of RP" so that if someone AFKs suddenly, that someone can pick-up the notes you left behind and keep your characters relevant (or use your character if the group could've REALLY USED YOUR HELP) so that nobody is ever stuck on account of some suddenly plot-pivotol character not moving for IRL reasons.

So get yourself a good band of friends that 'get' your thought process, try and include them in everything if you can. It's okay if they don't share ALL your interests, that's just the world's way of encouraging you to get more.

4. Make sure you get the ideas in your head written down, even the silly ones. Especially the silly ones. Mistakes happen, and memorable-mistakes are meme-worthy.

I work ~40 hours a week at a factory job, which is about an hour away, plus whatever overtime I volunteer for. And I like my overtime pay.

What I do, if I'm in a roleplay, is find time to write when I can. I type ideas and thoughts on my phone's notepad while I'm on break, or if I'm eating breakfast or something. I piece them together. I can only really manage one or two slow-paced roleplays because of it, but that's better than none, right? I also write drafts in an RPG PM to myself, so that I can edit it on my laptop or on my phone (and I also get to see what it looks like on the forum as I'm writing it). Granted, I haven't written in a while, but I'm hoping to change that soon. I just gotta find something worthwhile...

*eyes gloss over a myriad of weeb-ass anime roleplays*

Something... worthwhile... eventually...

My Problem hasn't been with work or business or momming. It has been with emergencies. This year will be the second time in my life I am shopping for Cemetery Plots and Christmas presents all at the same time.

I also treat it like a job, and I allow myself to "write" posts in my head while I am doing other things. If I have to I use a digital voice recorder and record short snippets of ideas. But it is very easy to let my mind wander while sewing certain things because of good machine feet, and pure muscle memory LOL So I can be sewing straight lines on 5 yards of something and writing a mental post at the exact same time. You get used to multi tasking.

While I am going to school for my degree, I also hold a job. I am a server, so hours wise, it's pretty good. I tend to work a lot though, almost daily. However, I rarely have to do doubles. Plus, the pay is nice. Granted, some days are better than others. If I can make at least $100 a shift, I had a good night. People are especially more giving during the holidays.

I tend to manage my RPing pretty well, though there are times that I work long shifts and come home and just want to relax and watch Netflix or play Overwatch or just go to bed. This has affected some RPs I was in, but I try not to let that happen.