How do you deal with waiting for an exciting game update when you already have so much to do in the current patch?

I get future envy a lot when it comes to games like World of Warcraft.

Games with have regular content releases that act as a kind of IV drip of story simultaneously dig deep hooks into me and drive me insane. I get into my own head, speculating wildly about what’s going on, what’s coming down the pike, what it all means — I mean, some of you have listened to Lore Watch, you’ve heard me say “We don’t know yet” in that wistful tone. You know that I want to know, and I want to know now.

It gets to the point where hearing about the next PTR sometimes makes me play less, or at least play less on the actual live servers of the game since I’m spending all of my spare time trying to tease any details I can out of the PTR, scouring all of Blizzard’s previews, and panning for gold in all of their livestreams and press statements. I get distracted by what’s coming to the point where I miss what I currently have. Then the new stuff comes out, I get super excited, and then I get distracted by the next patch and before you know it I’m off at the races again.

I’m not just like this with WoW — you should see the impressive white board I have up in my office outlining all the theories and rumors for the upcoming Phantom Liberty expansion coming to Cyberpunk 2077 — but it’s especially serious when I’m playing a game with new story coming regularly. Diablo 4 has been teasing me with new story in every Season and it’s brutal for me.

Am I alone in this? Do y’all ever get so wrapped up in the coming game that you forget the good stuff you can currently do, or bracing yourself for changes that haven’t even happened yet? How do you deal with future envy in your games?