It's late and I should probably go to bed, but I really want to get a post in. While I've been muddling my way through life, not getting many games played or miniatures painted, built, or otherwise progressed has sometimes gotten me down a bit. I made a realization today, around the 16th RV septic tank pumping of the day (that's one of the things I've been doing this summer and fall).
The realization came on the heels of something I think I remember Uncle Atom of Tabletop Minions saying in one of his videos. He said something to the effect that we are all going to have stages in life where our hobby will take a back seat for a while. Sometimes a long while. Maybe even years. And that's okay.
I guess I'm realizing that with the increased age of my kids comes an increased need to give up time I might use for hobbying as they need rides to things, help with things, etc. This need for me to be there has been increasing. We're pulling back the reins a bit compared to last year, so we may have plateaued on our busy-ness, but it's going to sit at this level for quite a while. Of course, I'm likely to start driving a school bus soon, so that's probably going to shift our dynamic again.
The next thing that came to me was the thought I'd been having about starting a YouTube channel, probably one of the types where I record myself painting or building something while I play some kind of free to use soothing music or I talk about something. Like what I realized about 3d printing, vlogging would just be another thing to to add to an already full plate. Do I really need or want that right now? I feel that I'd feel stressed about getting a video up and might start to lose the relaxation factor of doing something just to do it.
The third realization was that it must have been a while since I last posted anything here. Looking back, this looks to be the 4th posting of the year. Again, feeling a twinge of guilt that I'm not keeping up too well, but then remembering it's okay. These things can stay in the back seat for now and I'll occasionally let them come up front as circumstances allow.
I thought there was another realization in there, but my eyes are getting heavy and my brain is going numb. Perhaps I can get through some descriptions of the paining I've done since May.
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| Here is a horrible picture of the Blacklist Miniatures human cleric (left), dire bear, and halfling rogue. My youngest daughter (8) did paint the base brown of the dire bear. |
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| Blacklist Miniatures goblins. I tried some of the XArty Hub paints on these, mainly the Metallic Black on the swords these guys are holding. |
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| Blacklist earth elemental or stone golum or something. Loved painting this guy. I doesn't show up well in the image, but I added colours to my base grey to give the impression of mineral variety in the stones. |
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| A Nolzar's pack mule, painted by my 11 year old daughter. |
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| Another fun one to paint, the Blacklist shambling mound. The mushroom on its humped back took 6 layers of red paint to get it to where it is. I really like this sculpt. |
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| This sci-fi armoured soldier is a 3d print my nephew wanted me to paint for him. I brought it home and promptly forgot about it until he asked about it at Thanksgiving dinner. So I went home that evening and got it painted up real quick (with the help of a heat gun used for embossing). Mounted on the lower half of a Heroclix dial (sans status sticker and sanded down). |
With that, I'll end my ruminating for now. Hopefully, someone reading this at a time they are feeling stressed about not getting their hobby out much, they can take comfort in the fact that they aren't the only one and they can take things at their own pace. Only the dire bear and the sci-fi soldier were painted in one sitting. The rest have been half-hour here and there until I felt done enough.
Catch you later.
