I eventually learned to stop worrying and love the unplanned new main plot driving character for future episodes. 
Those are the best moments! Embrace them!
I genuinely just don't write ahead anymore, I just setup a world, see where it goes, follow threads and build on what the players say and what they want.
I pretend to plan ahead a lot, mostly.
Often I let the smartest-sounding and most creative solution to a puzzle be the solution I was waiting for. I get away with so much as long as the players believe they're on the right track and I'm just too Jokerfied to even try to railroad them anymore.
Same, kinda. I have a lot of things I know and I put in my world, threads I leave around. I have some "big plot" stuff, like what happened with this country, what happened with this person, what happened with this god, etc. Those might never be really explored or fully explained but I need to know those and facts about the world so I can answer questions, improv and bounce back when players do something unexpected.
Having a pretty clear foundation is very useful, a general theme, vibe, a way the world tends to work, a way the magic/fantastic/divine tends to work, etc. And that world is constantly built upon and expanded with and by the players, they'll ask questions where I go "Huh... I'm not sure", and we're figuring it out together!
We have the same tactic.
I mostly leave tools/props laying around with some character ideas, maybe have a first episode planned out, then see what shiny object the party chases...
... until I make that shiny object the important thing all along.
They get to feel like they figured things out, I get less work. Everyone's happy.
The world building, location crafting and society / char creation is something GMs do most for themselves in my opinion and then can see what the players pull and enhance it a bit with the tool box you created prior. Of course results may vary.
I once had my players come across a puzzle consisting of a gap too long and wide to jump across, with the express intent of having them stop to investigate some runes etched into the ground and realize the way across was to walk backwards across the gap
Instead, one of them came up with the idea to use a pair of immovable rods to climb up into the air, then tying a rope onto one of the rods and setting up a big swinging rope-type-dealy get across
He rolled good on acrobatics, so I let him do that
When all four other players got across the exact same way, I just had to laugh for a solid minute before asking them why they didn't investigate the etchings on the ground
"Oh, earlier, you had that book with the exploding glyphs in it and now we're all afraid to read things we don't understand"
I had turned all my players into superstitious aliterate acrobats
Basically the exact same thing happened to us in a game of middle Earth roleplay. We just tied a rope to the halfling and threw him across to tie it off at the other end. There was a hidden dwarfish mechanism that we completely missed
I have DMs that let this get entirely too out of pocket. We have an initial plot arc that just gets abandoned behind a bunch of half adventures that never resolve themselves.
Its honestly frustrating for me, as a player, to have the DM spend 4 hours on a talking flower that just metasticizes drama without any connection to the rest of the setting or anchor to anyone's own story.
Sitting midway through book 2 of a 6 book adventure path for years because of plot derailment is frustrating. Particularly when the DM just shrugs and says "it was your decision"
Is this potentially an issue with the other players too? I mean, couldn't you just step on the flower and be off?
Everyone plays to have fun, so either the GM is forcing this on others which doesn't seem to be the case, or this more of a player problem. Some people just want to fuck around and do random things, some care about the big plot. It's tough to reconcile what different players want sometimes. Good GMs can make this work and weave the plot in and out, but this can take a lot of time and effort and I've seen it too often being invisible to players, and it ends up being too much pressure on GMs. Players need to be clear on what they want in play, the GM as well (they are a player too!), and it should be just as much the responsibility of the players what they decide to do, where to go and what to focus on. The GM is just there to describe what happens when the players do things and do have the world around them change and do things, but if you don't want railroading then the responsibility of following leads and being able to focus should be shared with the players.
This kind of problem arises commonly with groups that have had/are used to railroad, it's a hard mindset to break. I've had to slowly ease those kinds of players into playing a more open-ended/crawl-y kind of play, because they are trying to find and follow the railroad, they assume it's there somewhere and are much more passive, waiting for the GM to lead them to where the plot is. If there are a lot of potential things to do, they'll panic or have the video-game reflex of wanting to do everything, completing all quests, and FOMO can be a real problem. This depends a lot on GM and players, and on the previous experiences of the GM and the players.
So all in all, good expectations and good communication throughout is key, the point is to have fun!
either the GM is forcing this on others which doesn't seem to be the case, or this more of a player problem
It is the DM putting out certain story elements with false urgency and the players leaning into their character roles, only to get mired in plot that is more tedious than fun.
We like each other and enjoy spending time together, but we often aren't thrilled with the direction of the story.
Apologies for assuming and misunderstanding then. I get what you mean, if it's something other players are also bothered by it sounds like this should be discussed with the group. Is your GM the forever-gm, or are there other people that also run tables?
That's where things get messy.
Because there are other GMs, but this GM is in the best position to host. What's more, the game is more Westmarches style, and the B-list players are sporadic. Its not a trivial thing to reboot.
Oh nooo... a monarch is getting swallowed by an evil portal. Nooo...
The scaly bard with the flower and the likely romance attempt incoming is a mood.
My DM jokes that when ever she doesn't have enough stuff ready she just drops an NPC cause she knows we'll spend an hour in game just talking to them.
DMs like this should just write a book. It's the same outcome because I've only ever gotten people to read 20 pages when I joined a writer's workshop. But at least you get the satisfaction of seeing the plot through.
Come to think of it. I did this to myself. I wrote, in a novel, a sassy woman who tricks the party into thinking they lost the minerals they were sent on a quest to find while they were talking to a related woman. I liked the duo so much they ended up as recurring characters who are important to the plot. They represent an anarchist, matriarchal commune who bend the rules in two warring countries (one communist, one capitalist), one of them is the adopted mother of one of the characters. They really stole the spotlight when it was originally supposed to be one woman who was a plot contrivance.
In general, writing little short stories, or in-universe little pieces (article, newspaper text, journal, etc.) is a good way for worldbuilding and plot-enjoying GMs, and honestly for all GMs I think, to let their cool ideas out without making their game pre-written and boring.
Like, you've got an NPC, villain or plot you really find cool? Great, write some foundation for it the players might come across and interact with and don't assume anything they might do. Then, depending on how it's going to come up in play, you can write some stories with your cool NPC that you really enjoy thinking about, either something in the past, some parallel event that the players might hear about (did you hear the weird merchant somehow set that village on fire?), or even more involved stories and adventures if you know the NPC is not going to meet the players or their role has already been fulfilled.
Sometimes you have a very cool idea, you introduce it in play, the players do something unexpected or just don't really grab on it, that's fine. The weird merchant goes on their merry way to his own stories, it gives you a way of venting the things you wanted to do and even things you couldn't have done with your players, a way of building your world a little more. It's like a kind of solo-session for yourself :)
