Neverwinter Nights is takin' up waaay too much time

Neverwinter Nights is a game I first laid eyes on while I was living in Malaysia for a short while. When I say laid eyes on, I don't mean played, cos the machine I had at the time (and still have now sadly enough) was a laptop, with insufficient video processing power to take on the task of running it. It wasn't until I went back to Aus that I managed to give it a try, using the always up to date computers at my parents house. I don't mind saying that it sucked me in. A fair whack of time was spent playing the game, much to the disgust of my then girlfriend (now wife). The first time I played the game I entered it as a cleric, which seemed to be a pretty good choice as things were going well, however, the length of the game eventually came to its downfall and I was forced to give it up for other pursuits. While it is fun to play I must admit that it is not a game that is made for people who have anything to really do in their lives, story lines are long and side quests often involve very tedious and time consuming quests, so the game seems neverending.
Now that I am in Japan and have purchased a Mac with the capabilities to once again give it a go, I have foolishly loaded it up to try and finish the sucker. When I figured that I had a little bit of time every now and then to finish it off, I must have forgotten to calculate the immense number of hours required to actually complete the task. This time I even selected a Paladin as my character, hoping that the extra hitting power might make the game take a little less time than before. The frustration levels in my wife have been hovering at boiling point for a little while now, but I am not ready to pull the plug just yet. I have almost reached the same point that I was up to in the last game so I have just got to push on, although I am already questioning myself in the same way as my wife when I say, "what good does beating the game do me anyway?".
Games, fun additions to our lives, or wasteful distractions, I'm thinking a little of both but a little too much of the latter when it comes to NWN.