Before I went back to software development I found myself in some national task forces for enterprise architecture in the public sector, and as such got to do a lot of speeches on it at different conventions. For around the first year I literally had to do the presentation for myself. In the beginning I spent an entire day talking to the mirror, otherwise my presentation would be terrible. After a couple of years of it, I can now pull a presentation out my ass on the spot about basically any subject of which I have a solid foundation of knowledge.

I imagine game mastering to be a lot like that. Except when playing a game or D&D you also have a bunch of people participate in your presentation. I think you may have skipped the practice part a little too much, but I’d encourage you to get into to it as a player because it can be really fun with the right group.

I personally play AD&D with a bunch of other 35-40+ year olds, and the primary reason is to spend a few Saturdays each year drinking beer. Basically the reason for which I play blood bowl. The stories we go through are better than playing Baldurs Gate was though, largely thanks to our game master and the fact that nobody is too serious, and maybe because AD&D wasn’t designed to be as forgiving or “your character is now a God” as the modern systems. Anyway, we found our group through Facebook, and while there are two sets of “friends” in it half of it are solo players who joined us, so it’s certainly possible for you to find something if you look!