you should make an ideas book
from time to time friends will tell me about ideas they've had for games (or stories, or whathaveyou). i don't know why they do this. i suspect it's because i make games. every time they do, however, i give them the same advice:
write that shit down!!
yes, seriously! even if it's not super fleshed out. even if you don't think it's the best idea. even if it isn't necessarily original. whatever! just write it down; words are cheap, storage is cheap, paper is cheap, whatever. just keep it somewhere you can find it again. preferably with some kind of organizational system.
why?
some day, you'll have the energy to work on something and nothing to work on. this happens to me frequently. when that's the case: load up your ideas! flip through them, pick an interesting one, and work on it! just don't commit to a Whole Thing -- keep it as small in scope as possible. if your idea is "an MMO where everything is run by players and there's a global economy and 12000 different classes that all balance each other delicately-" okay, that's not something you can really scope down. but if it were something like "an MMO where the currency is Blood" (or something), take away the MMO part. make a game where the player pays for things in blood. find the implications, work out interesting situations they could get into, lean into it (if you like). maybe it'll be fun! maybe it'll suck.
"but wooby, i can't make games/write/draw/[do xyz]!" you fool. you absolute buffoon. you've walked directly into my trap. you have activated my next lesson...
just do it anyways
i argue that nobody can really do anything.
more precisely, i argue that "skill" is merely "familiarity", and you don't develop familiarity without putting in the effort to become familiar with the thing. pick an idea and work on it. if you're extremely new to something, maybe sit down and learn a little bit of fundamentals first; but work on your idea soon.
"but wooby, if i can't do the thing, then surely it'll be bad!" yes! it will. it is going to suck so hard if you let it get to you. so don't! lean into it being bad! when you finish, you'll have either made something Bad, and have therefore achieved your goal, or you'll somehow have made something Good, and will have another feather under your hat. just keep going!
i made my first song... a little over 8 years ago? as of writing this post. it was bad! i didn't know it at the time, but it was bad. but it taught me skills that i use to this day to make music that (i think) isn't as bad! and yes, 8 years is a lot of time. but it's not like i was only doing music that entire time! i wasn't even doing it consistently! i took a huge break from it from 2020-2022.
make things. lean into the bad. do whatever you want to. the world is enriched when we share our stories and our ideas with one another, and you're invited to join in that!