Scene: A shop with bustling foot traffic outside. I enter, looking to buy a pair of pants.

Salesperson: Good morning!

Me: Morning.

I proceed to wander around the store, unnecessarily touching things just because I can until I find a pile of pants that I’m interested in. I sort through the pile, looking for a style that I like, color that I like, and fit. I take a few to the changing room, testing them out and comparing different pairs to one another until I find a pair that I like. I take it up to the register.

Salesperson: Good morning!

Me: Hi.

Salesperson: (Takes the pants I put on the counter): I really like these! But did you know that we offer custom pants?

Me: …custom pants?

Salesperson: Yes! We allow you to create whatever kind of pants you want so you don’t need to try and fit into something off-the-shelf. Are you interested?

Me: Sure!

Scene: In the back room, which somehow stretches into infinity. The salesperson makes a sweeping arm gesture to all of the machines, boxes, racks, and — somehow — agricultural fields inside the shop.

Salesperson: All you need to do is pick the cotton, make it into a textile, dye it, pattern and cut it, sew it, and add whatever you want! Pockets! Zippers! WiFi hotspots! You name it!

Me: This is FANTASTIC!

[I get to work]

Scene: Forty seven hours later, laboring at a table in the back of the shop. There are materials strewn everywhere: the floor, the ceiling, stapled to the wall, spilled on various workbenches. I am tired, sweaty for some reason, and covered in grime, yet I have not made one pair of pants. Then the realization hits me. I exit the back room, empty handed.

Salesperson: Good morning!

Me: [Grunts]

Salesperson: How is your project?

Me: I remembered something: I just wanted a pair of pants. That’s all I wanted. A pair of pants.

[Roll credits]

---

I came to this realization yesterday morning in the shower after having spent a very intense Friday researching how to extend Obsidian in ways that I was sure I could, as I was trying to make my very own Ultimate TTRPG Vault. After several frustrating hours of getting close but never on-target, of reading three different plugin document sites at the same time, and finding myself at the same community air-quote help air-quote posts again and again, It dawned on me the next morning that I had completely lost sight of the reason I was doing all of this.

I wanted “a tool” that that I would feel comfortable using, that supported my ideas and the way that I work, so I could maybe sit down and hash out some ideas for some TTRPG content. What I got was a rabbit hole that had absolutely nothing to do with any of that. It was becoming a project that existed for its own sake, completely divorced from the reason I started it in the first place, and not only was I no closer to getting started with my TTRPG aims, but I was actually farther away than I had been when I started. Trying to figure out how to get Obsidian to do what I wanted to do with all of these cross-purpose plugins was consuming my mental cycles. I was half-way out the door on Saturday afternoon but I had to run downstairs to quickly try one more idea while my wife was getting into the car. Several times I said “fuck it” and closed Obsidian, but then re-opened it seconds, minutes, or hours later only to find myself on the same document websites, the same Reddit posts, the same YouTube videos that didn’t really help me before. I contemplated deleting what I had done just as a way to salt the earth, but I know from experience how angry I get later on when I do that, so I didn’t.

Then the questions started. Why not use an off-the-shelf solution? Why not fit that square peg into that round hole? Maybe it sounds dumb to you, but I take my environments very seriously, not just in terms of capability but in look and feel. Sites like World Anvil or Kanka are fantastic, but I have a free solution installed right now; why should I pay for the privilege of doing what I’m certain Obsidian can do? And I’m a professional app developer, dammit! I should be smrt enough to make this happen, or so I keep telling myself. The only roadblocks are learning by example, which is the easiest form of learning out there, right?

So now I’m standing in the metaphorical back room, 1/4 of a pair of what I think are pants in one hand, scissors in the other, a sharp pain in my lower back and a look of confusion on my face as I realize that I lost sight of my original goals because I was so obsessed with a completely different process that had been spawned in the pursuit of original intent. The plot twist is that last night, this mess really started to look like a pair of pants. For all of the struggle I had endured, I think I finally found a way forward to get Obsidian to do what I want, or at least convinced myself to compromise enough that I can accomplish my goals and not feel like I let myself down; I just need to get some time to implement the test to see if I’m right. Is this legit? Or is it just my brain refusing to let go of something, even when it knows it should have been focusing on something else entirely this whole time?