You're probably all right in your views on this, but you are overlooking one major aspect of my "problem"... the problem is that I enjoy the LIVE PROCESS, and when the process becomes boring (as in PROGRAMING the arrangement), I quit... no endorphines released to keep the focus...
That is a skill i do not have... that "taken for granted" skill to keep on working, even though I feel bored with what I'm doing... that's a major difficulty for autistic people in general... if stuff does not interest me, I quit and do what DOES interest me... which in my case is starting something new and exiting... that is why I end up with loads of riffs, but VERY FEW finished longer projects. Going back to a riff to work on it? yes, tried it many times, I never get the urge to mess with them again, I'd rather start out something completely new... that will be where my focus are, and I am unable to shift it (compare it to kids waiting to open Christmas presents... really hard to shift focus!).
But I also know that it is not a time limit... it's not because I cannot do 10 minute or even 70 minute scores, I just need to ENJOY it all the way thru... and the only thing I really enjoy about music making is playing to backing tracks... but I grow bored if I have to create 70 minutes of backing tracks, track by track... it has to be fun, and cutting and pasting, and scrolling and editing is just not fun. Neither is recording one instrument at a time for 10-70 minutes.
I have no problem layering small loops, track by track until a climax-loop has been done... i could create dosens of these in one day and have fun with it... this is why I hope that making short sequenced loops and playing to these live will allow me to have more fun creating the whole arrangement as a play along, changing things along the go... I know that you get some limitations using this technique, and that it demands some good live skills, but that's just a challenge, not boring... it makes a track a bit more chaotic, more human with imperfections etc.. but that can be ok as well, I've seen lots of people jammin' like this on the net.
Summa summarum; I like PLAYING, not editing... I enjoy the PROCESS of playing live... I dislike programming an arrangement, I want to PERFORM it.
Hope this clears things up a bit...