Or, How I barely painted anything and Failed my Quarter Two goals
As an update about the progress I made during the second quarter goes, this is going to be a bit underwhelming. In my update for the First Quarter of the Year, I shared a few projects that I was planning to finish in the coming months. As I look back, I was a bit hopeful, maybe even naïve.
Especially so, since I didn’t get a single fuckin one of those projects completed. The Deathwing Assault box is built and primed, but was immediately added to the pile of Dark Angels. I went so far as to bring the box of Tyranids out as a “Livingroom” project to work on with contrast paints while watching TV with the wife. Speaking of Kera, we didn’t work on a single fucking Fallout miniature, in spite of the fact that we re-watched the new show several times.
Quarter Two Results
I rolled into April by painting some of the tank models Ian gave me at the beginning of the year. I like painting tanks. Prime, airbrush a base and some quick highlights, drybrush and maybe a few specific edge highlights and you’re practically done. While they were in the works, I also painted some hq models. All told I got three Russ pattern tanks painted, and one became a commander while also painting the tank commander, a commissar and a marshall all in the dark blue I had adopted for my Krieg kill team. Oh, good, another kill team turning into a whole fucking army.
For whatever reason, sometimes I just click on the eBay icon and it leads to danger. I found some out-of-print Endoskeletons for a defunct game that I haven’t even played: obviously, I bought them. One the plus side, They were primed silver, washed and dry brushed to completion in a few hours. Speaking of games I haven’t played, I finally got some Gonks for the Cyberpunk Red Combat Zone game, as I didn’t want to play with just the base models, and also discovered some Imperialis land raiders to add to the project for no good reason. Lastly, while we didn’t play much and definitely didn’t paint anything, I bought us some more fallout models and ordered the minis for the TV characters, but they wouldn’t arrive until May.
While the burnout would start flaring up towards the end of April, it was May when it really kicked me in the balls. All month, I only managed to paint under a dozen Ultramarines instead of getting the whole 40+ model project finished, as was my hope for the month. Lucky for me, my apathy towards the hobby only saw me add the new Terminator chaplain model to my shame on top of the Fallout guys I ordered previously.
Then along came June, rearing its ugly head. Stupid time, ceaselessly marching forward; whom do I speak to about this? Desperately searching for a way out of my hobby rut, I managed to force myself to paint more Ultramarines than in the previous month. Barely. And the project was not even close to done, and the level of enjoyment landed somewhere between watching that show your spouse loves but you can’t stand and going to the dentist for some mild drilling.
I definitely spent a little too much time depression shopping on the hideous Warhammer webstore and eBay. I ended up with some resin models for Horus Heresy. And another Titan. For fucks sake, Tyson, you have two unbuilt titans as it is. I know, I know, but this way we can build all three at the same time and get the whole maniple complete at once, he says to himself, pretending like that makes sense.
On the plus side, buying minis and failing to paint any causes some stress and anger, which finally led me to shed some shame. I sold some unneeded new-on-sprue marines and nearly a hundred warhammer fantasy dwarves. It felt fantastic, plus the wife and I decided that selling shame was a positive movement in my overall goal for the year. So, I got to subtract the total number of models sold from the models I have bought, and just like that I was nearly even for the year. That’s a huge step in getting 50% more painted than bought, so, in celebration, I spent the money I made on plastic Heresy models.
What a fuckin dolt. But, I’m sure you saw that coming…
While I painted less than half of the models I did in the first quarter of the year, due to selling models, I actually painted more than I bought. Well, I guess, more than I cumulatively added to my shame. That seemed good enough for me. Best I could hope for really. But, why? What got in the way of my hobby over the past three months?
Just Fucking Tired…
Everything. Everything got in the way. I spent too much time stressed out and doom-scrolling on my phone. I read articles implying that everyone is at their limit. Everyone is burnt out, Everything sucks. Everything is fucked. Now look, I’m quoting Fred Durst, which is just about horrible, but, that fucker is more correct now than he was in the late 90s.
Life is stressful; more-so than ever before. Every aspect of existence feels cumbersome. Everything is going up in price steadily but our paychecks are staying the same. Doing more at work with less help for that same paycheck doesn’t help. On top of the same bullshit that everyone is dealing with these days, we have been struggling here with long-term health issues and for whatever reason it has felt more stressful lately than usual.
Its likely that I found my upper limit for stress. Over the years, I feel like I have handled shit pretty well, I mean, aside from hobby buying trends that make me look like a small import business. But, I found myself not handling it so well lately.
The hobby is what I have used to shed that stress. Buy. Build. Paint. Feeling of accomplishment. Squirt of endorphins. Start again. That process was not doing the trick, and I quickly found that I didn’t even want to work on the projects that I had set before myself. My stress relief wasn’t working, and then quickly started to add to the stress due to mounting disinterest. That disinterest led directly to burn out.
Sitting on the ungodly Pile of Shame Awesome that I am, long-term burnout can be devastating, especially if I fail to curb my buying habits while I spend time away from the hobby. Luckily I am emotionally intelligent enough to see the effects of hobby fatigue and creeping depression that was slowly taking root in my skull.
I pushed games off and stopped making new plans. I failed to play the games required for the small Crusade campaign a few of us had just started. I knew I needed to break through the fugue state that I found myself in. So, I turned to some old friends.
After initially pushing the game off, the idea of disappointing my friends pushed my mind back in the direction of my Pathfinder campaign. This was helpful, as it allowed me to get my creative juices flowing a little and forced me into some social situations, albeit with my wife and some of my closest friends. These guys are my emotional support: we bitch about work, life and family bullshit, and each of us feel better after our regular hobby sessions.
During a Pathfinder game, we get to live other lives for a short while, but still take the time to chat, throw playful if not punishingly accurate (and hilarious) insults at each other and generally enjoy ourselves. The engagement of my group shows their enjoyment, which is paramount to me, and this gave me a little something to focus on that wasn’t miniature game related. Yet this was a minor aid in my quest to find my way back.
Video games were the ultimate answer. I spent some time getting all nostalgic with some classic games through the RetroPi hardware I acquired through Facebook some years back. Nintendo games are hard as shit when you have been away from them for so long.
It was Skyrim and Fallout that helped me back; the video game equivalent of a safety blanket. Sure, I put some time into some new games, but these Bethesda games are so comfort zone for me that I was able to enjoy them without having to try. I know them. I love them. I let them soothe my soul and remind me that I can enjoy things, regardless of how stressful life gets.
Where do we go from here?
The level of silly this represents is not lost on me, but, honestly, the little things are important. Feeling more aligned in life helped my work life as well. As I write this, I am at home, while I should be at work. Health issues kept me home as a caregiver today. While this is stressful, and while I have professional guilt being home instead of at work, I am less torn up by it than I have been.
While shedding some of that vitriolic stress, I started doing hobby-adjacent things to help bring me back. I listened to lore podcasts, watched battle reports, and started reading through Heresy campaign books. As the quarter is coming to a close I find myself itching to get back into the hobby. I started slowly: I built some resin assault marines for Kera’s Word Bearers army, along with some Ruinstorm Daemons to accompany them. I also applied transfers to the Ultramarines I had painted so far for 40k. Now they are ready for photography.
I refuse to put down a bunch of projects I hope to accomplish in the coming quarter. Sure, I would love to get to those Deathwing models and clear the Ultramarines from my to-do list. But, I won’t do that to myself. The thing that wants to happen in my head right now is Heresy models. So, I am going to let myself slowly return to the hobby, you know, don’t wanna pull a hobby muscle, and see where it goes.
July is likely to be a light month. Same with the year I suppose. Thanks to the pile of Tomb King skeletons I completed in the first quarter, I am on track to get an average of one model a day finished in 2024.
Here’s hoping I can get some models painted, and maybe a few articles posted for completed projects. Maybe not. Either way, I will see you back here again in a few months. Until then:
#paintsomefuckinminis
Tyson
Obsessive and neurotic collector of little plastic men, novels about the same little plastic men and paints to make the little plastic men pretty. Married to Kera, who puts up with him and pretends that she doesn’t hear him speaking to the little plastic men in between making pew pew noises in the hobby room. Requires adult supervision. A menace to himself but rarely to others. More beard than man
