In which we discuss the 4th quarter, the year in general and moving forward from here
As I sit here and look back on the past twelve months, the year feels a bit bitter-sweet. There were struggles, both in life and in my hobby, but also successes.
Let us begin with a brief look at the final quarter of the year:
Revenge of the Hobby
During the 3rd quarter, I dismissed my unwanted projects, relegating them to a storage locker. I am still surrounded by my hobbies. Literally. But, the projects that I am disinterested in are no longer looming over me, judging me for ignoring them. The weight of those projects, once a point of excitement for me then turned sour, has been lifted away.
I was in a good place. Heresy projects were laid before me. In a stroke of luck, although I may be unclear whether it was good or ill, the weather stayed particularly glorious. By which I mean the temperature was above suggested rattle-can primer temperatures well beyond norm. I usually build all of September to set myself up with work for the dark and cold winter months. I also usually fail to paint these models during the intended time.
As I have already posted, the Raven Guard project was completed in about a month. The eBay purchase arrived. The weather was uncharacteristically nice still, and my vacation plans went the way of the dodo. Half of the Raven Guard project was completed within that first week. The whole project represents about 20% of my overall painting output for the year. Not bad for an army that almost never happened.
Except for a few small details, we also finished up a pile of Steel Legion tanks for Ian just before the end of the year, but, I will let him regale you with that tale at a later date. While I considered those some “finished” models for my count for the year, a crowdfunding surprise from Past Tyson arrived from Poland in the form of the Masters of the Universe Battlegrounds legacy shipment. One step forward, one step backwards.
Then, since we decided the next board game that my wife and I are playing with Cliff and his wife will be Nemesis, I got (most of) the models for that game painted quickly with contrast at the eleventh hour, by which I mean the last week of the year. Of course I also got a legacy shipment for the recent Nemesis crowdfunding campaign: the product that I missed out on before was shipped to me and the third game will ship later after it has been produced. One step forward, two fucking steps backwards this time.
All of this was followed by putting on the finishing touches on three Heresy Ultramarines on the very last evening of the year. The Winsor & Newton I was using was placed down on the hobby table moments before the New Year.
How did I paint a lot of minis and feel like I failed?
Ok, So. Yeah. I painted more than 400 models. Yup. Four-Hundred and sixteen to be precise. Yet I still have this feeling of failure: it’s not all-encompassing or anything but it is fairly persistent. I set out with a plan for the year and while I managed one of the two goals I set myself, albeit with a bit of a twist, I failed miserably with the other. So, Lets start with the success:
My secondary goal was to release some of the negative pressure upon my psyche by painting at least 50% more miniatures than I bought. Strictly speaking, I failed at that. I bought plenty. For the first time, though, I managed to also shed some Hobby Debt by selling a chunk of my backlog from the deep dark shame. By the time I was done selling Warhammer Fantasy Battle Dwarves, Dark Elves and Skaven that had been sitting around since well before that game was cancelled, as well as some excess Tyranids I had no real use for, I had turned my percentage around to the positive. Positive only because I counted the “sold” models as negative to offset the “bought” miniatures this year. Along the same lines, I did not count the models Ian paid me for my help with his Steel Legion army, but ended up with a tank army I started painting as the Death Korp of Krieg, along with a pile of resin infantry of the same denomination.
It felt great to shed some shame. Life has been stressful over the past few years. In order to deal with that stress I turned to the hobby. I went in deep. It worked, all the way until it didn’t… Next thing I knew I had a dozen extra painted armies, which was great, but also a fuck-ton of unpainted models. Which is less great.
The biggest problem was setting up unrealistic plans for the year. The primary intention of the year was to get some projects done. The Tomb Kings launch box was completed in the first quarter, and so were the last few Grey Knights. The Tyranids were finished over the summer, along with selling the ones I didn’t want. But, That was it. No other projects found a conclusion.
Guess I answered the question posed this time last year. Nope. Didn’t get them done. I am literally sitting on 3 Flesh-eater Court models, but I don’t wanna look at them. There are 20 or so Ultramarines for 40k that are still lookin at me from their damned open-topped box. The titans were not worked on. I didn’t even paint The Lion or the Deathwing Assault box I was so excited for.
They are built, primed and laying around unceremoniously dumped in a fucking pile. Don’t even get me started about the games not produced by Games Workshop. I have a whole extra army worth of Free Folk to paint and several random board games. We have several hundred Fallout minis to paint so we can play Wasteland Warfare or Factions.
I got a bunch of models painted, but I only managed to paint more than I bought by fuckin with the math in a way I didn’t intend to when I set the goal down. And only a handful of projects got completed in the year, and in actuality, I added more projects to the list. For these reasons, I feel like my hobby year was a bit of a failure. Not a fiery dumpster or anything like that, but surely not a win.
Then again… for the first time ever, I sold some of my backlog to pay for the models I wanted to work on in the now. And I stored a bunch of minis that I am not ready to part with. Yet. So that, I will consider a win.
(re)DISCOVERY OF PREVIOUS HOBBIES
Strangely, as stress about The Hobby receded while I drove away from the shit I tucked away in a storage locker, not only did it make approaching my hobby no longer unbearable, but it also paved the way to loosen the stranglehold on my free time and mental bandwidth.
Books!
Books happened. Finally. After struggling to find something that held my attention for more than a few chapters, I recently managed to read several books and some short stories. Having read the Heresy straight through like it was my job, reading, as a hobby, started to feel like work. It took a bit of effort but I found something that actually made me want to read. It’s quite nice to find my way back to reading again.
While we are at it, video games happened as well. For too long, whenever I tried to find a few free moments for any pastime that wasn’t applying paintbrush to miniature, it felt like I was betraying my first love. Kera plays games constantly, and a level of jealousy and straight up guilt about my Steam library found me sitting with a controller in hand for the first time in a while. Damn did it feel good, and now I am hungry for more.
Turns out I was in an emotionally abusive relationship with Warhammer. Things are better now, and I will continue to strive for a more healthy balance. I can’t say it will be perfect. But I can say that I will try. I was running some tabletop roleplaying earlier in the year, but that game has ended for now, and I will get a chance to be a player for the first time since college. Can’t fuckin’ wait.
I did get some actual games in lately, not just hobbying. Heresy has been set up on our table a lot lately. Kera’s illness buffets her with pain and fatigue daily, but we get through games by leaving it up and spreading it across several days. Feels great to get playing again, especially with my wife. Getting models painted for us to use in battle against each other, watching the expression of euphoria as she massacres my marines, and the look of crushing defeat when I make a few invulns, it makes the alone time in the hobby room worthwhile.
Moving Forward
I got a bunch of miniatures painted. Not as many of the projects I was hoping to finish got, well, finished. Or even started. But, I de-stressed a bit, feel better about my hobby for it, and had some fun playing both RPGs and tabletop games with my wife. So, i guess that feeling of failure is a bit unnecessary. It seems to be a product of my own lofty expectations. At the time I thought I was setting myself up for success. But once again, the nearly-impossible task I set before myself was doomed from the get go.
In the end, I choose to feel good about the year, in spite of the failure to attain my goals. For fucks sake, they were rather bullshit anyway. But that begs the question: What now? For the first time in many years, I am not going to set forth a collection of nearly-impossible goals in this space, only to look back on them in dread. Do I have plans? Of course, but I am going to keep them fairly nebulous.
This year, I will paint more Heresy models. I have models primed for Sons of Horus, Emperor’s Children, Iron Hands and Ultramarines. I am not going to claim that I will finish this army or that project, but I will definitely paint some more Horus Heresy models.
Another thing I will do this year is justify the projects I crowdfunded lately. I have more Masters of the Universe wargame and Nemesis board game minis shipping some time this year. I already have the first delivery from each of those projects and eagerly await the rest to be produced. The package of Battleground Minis, full to the brim of He-man, his friends and his enemies was quite impressive. I keep paying for games before they are made, and then not being ready to paint them when they arrive.
Of more import is the STL files I just got access to from the Trench Crusade Kickstarter campaign. Kera seems eager to get into a game with me that I haven’t been obsessing about since before we knew each other. We bought several complete model collections from the campaign and I will likely be printing some of the other forces for a buddy, which, you know, will likely result in my own warband of each of those as well. The best part is, I don’t consider 3d printed models to have been purchased. It will add to my painted totals only.
Website work will hopefully get a little more focus, mainly on galleries. I have tried weekly blogs, then monthly articles, finally quarterly updates. The plan is now to do away with hobby/shame based posts all-together: I don’t track my progress the same anymore, and to be honest I don’t believe anyone read those articles other than when my wife who does a quick edit of it and when Robert sets and preps the post.
Instead I will work on multi-part project based series, posting as I complete stages of projects instead of waiting for the entire army or project to be complete. Right now I have an Ultramarines terminator army and a Zone Mortalis force of Iron Hands, both nearly complete: hopefully, you will see one, if not both, of those articles here soon. Until then.
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
