‘New year, new army!’ Or so the saying goes. In my case it’s more like ‘new year, what the hell am I going to do?’
After a year like 2020 I would say it’s extremely easy for even the most focussed person to have lost some hobby mojo…and I’m definitely not the most focussed person! Add in the death of a close family member, as well as a couple other people I knew, and for me it’s very easy to sink into a directionless swamp of introspection and whatever else that could drag you down.
Personal losses aside (as if it’s easy to just waltz right past that, but that isn’t the purpose of this post), this is meant to be an examination of how one (me, in particular) can get my ‘hobby mojo’ back to get to work on new personal projects again.
Motivation killer #1: Item Acquisition
To call me a hobby butterfly is very fair. However, I’m also a hobby magpie: “ooh, unofficial Father Ted miniatures? Yes please!”
These models would sit next to my unofficial Knights of Ni models, which sit next to my very large Otherworld Miniatures pewter giant, 3 Saga dark age skirmish forces, and let’s not even start on unbuilt 40K and 30K models. Or Kickstarter board games.
The ability to instantly switch hobby/game/model focus as one swipes through a newsfeed is dangerous! Not just for the bank balance, but for space in The Loft, tidiness throughout one’s house and peace with one’s partner. I’m sure all but the most organised of us have been there.
So how does this tie into the title of this piece? Well, getting stuff is just one aspect of hobby motivation. Call yourself a ‘collector’? Hi, me too. Performing ‘retail therapy’? Oh, for sure. Going to shops or shows with cash burning a hole in your pocket? Uhh…hi.
Eventually, for me all that turns into mounds and mounds of ‘STUFF’, and once the mounds turn into piles, each individual item in the pile starts to represent potentially of hours of ‘work’ – rather than seeing each thing as an item of future enjoyment. I suppose it’s a mental thing. Imagine looking at a stack of movie disc boxes and instead of thinking each one represents 90 minutes (or more, assuming you rewatch them) of entertainment, you think of each one being an hour and a half of tedium and emptiness when you’d rather do anything else. Not that painting models is tedious, I definitely enjoy it, but that hopefully gives an idea of how I look at my ‘pile of shame’.
So instead of diving in and resolving to tidy up (build, sell, whatever) the mounds of STUFF, I can get lost in thinking about ALL that needs to be done and end up freezing myself into inaction. That’s a big chink of armour in my motivation. Like I said, it’s a mental thing.
Now, my ‘mounds of STUFF’ affects me fairly severely, to be honest, because being American I’m used to American-sized spaces. (Just watch any US-based show to get an idea of what I mean. Utterly unrealistic ‘Friends’ style loft rentals in New York City aside, the average American has a fantasy-sized house or apartment compared to most Brits.) So even though I’ve lived in the UK for 17 years I still have an American-sized appetite for STUFF. It’s a hard habit to break. But I’m working on it, as you’ll see.
The piles of STUFF really starts to hit home when you have to do a ‘shifting blocks’ type game just to get to a computer desk or painting table. Move a stack of things from the chair to the other side of the room to get to the table. Then move the same pile again to get something you forgot on the other side…
So, how to resolve Item Acquisition as a motivation killer? There’s a couple of methods I’m already using:
Item Acquisition Solution #1a: Focus Hobby Interests
I have a lot of hobby interests. A LOT. Formula One. MotoGP motorcycle racing. Classic racing cars (European and American). Sci-fi book and TV series. Some fantasy reading. Lord of the Rings. Crime TV series. Radio-control model cars. Comic books and graphic novels. TANKS. Star Wars. Oftentimes, a mix of all of these (RC model Star Wars tanks!). It’s quite an eclectic mix. And if I had the spare room in the garden or a garage, I’d probably have a project (real) car.
And that’s just before getting into ‘hobby’ as we term it round these parts. Army & model interests, reading (a bit), listmaking (not my thing but it has to be done), painting, new paint lines, new brushes, hobby organizing, storage and more. AIRBRUSHING, oh my gosh I have a ton of airbrushes, and all the stuff that goes with them as well.
But in terms of things that take up space in:
- The Loft (my space, except for Christmas items)
- The Dining Room (a true shame the STUFF has piled up in there, but that is where all the gaming happens really, but i’s supposed to be a shared space) and even creeping into the
- Second Bedroom (which shouldn’t have any of MY stuff in it at all),
it’s the models and boardgames (particularly crowdfunded ‘all in’ pledges for games with very large boxes!) that take up the majority of space. Books and DVDs ain’t got nothing on model boxes!
How to focus the ‘HOBBY’ (that is, wargaming stuff) that I have? The sad reality is that the number of armies, or at least the number of army units, has to be chopped quite a bit. With work, coursework, downtime and personal model projects, I just don’t have the time to devote to playing the game overall, and therefore I have way too many armies, starting with Dark Eldar (mixing bad metal models with beautiful plastic models) from the end of 5th edition/start of 6th.
So I’ll be limiting my active armies to Orks for 9th edition and Alpha Legion for Heresy/30K. Slight caveat with my House Mordred Chaos Knights, as they’re usable in both systems by themselves, and can also ally with Alpha Legion. They’re also easier to play since there’s fewer weapons and few models to worry about the rules for (although they’re just as confusing as a normal marine army).
‘Active armies’ means these are the ones I’ll purchase codexes and cards for, because I’ve been stung plenty of times by getting codex books for armies I never used! (see the next section)
Now, I have tons of models for these existing armies but as I make a proper table of organisation and get points totals and all that, I’ll surely find myself looking at unbuilt models, which I’ll sell off (again, see the next section).
Other armies that I still want to keep around or build up to smallish forces of about 1000pts include these factions with a focus on specific units, roughly in order of preference:
- Death Guard – Mortarion, all the different foot troops released for 8th edition plus plague drones and Sigmar daemons (not a fan of the vehicles)
- Primaris (yes, I know…) – homebrew chapter called the Warp Stalkers but none are built as yet
- Dark Eldar – Venoms, Truebloods and Reavers
- Eldar – jet bikes, psykers and Fire Dragons in Wave Serpents…plus the superheavies, which are gorgeous
- Chaos Space Marines – Forgefiends and troops with transports
In the spirit of small forces, I’ve got a couple skirmish factions underway as well – the only one anywhere close to ‘complete’ is my Goliaths gang for Necromunda, which can be boosted with several bounty hunters who are ready to paint:
Item Acquisition Solution #1b: De-Hobby
Thanks to ebay ‘£1 max selling fee’ weekends, I’ve been doing what I call ‘de-hobbying’ – that is, selling stuff! There’s several things I’ve sold, but there’s plenty left to go. Luckily for me, the more I sell, the more I want to sell, even when ebay isn’t running promotional weekends. Facebook marketplace and various selling groups help (especially because they have no fees).
Once I’m at a happy level (that is, can walk around The Loft without having to play Sliding Blocks or sidle sideways past storage boxes, which is literally a goal) I can count the electronic funds in my Paypal account and celebrate my newfound spaciousness. And NOT instantly re-fill the space with more hobby stuff that will sit around for ages!
I’m also selling things that I’ve had sat around unused for a very long time, like RC kits, computer stuff, consoles and excess 3D printers – which bring their own headaches with buyers putting unrealistic demands on very old electronics, but at least it’s out of the housem and I can use the newfound space to organize things just a bit better. I just need to remember to put UNTESTED in the listing and be a bit more particular about specifying that it’s not only ‘used’, but probably ‘for spares or repair’.
I think that’s more than enough for this post – a follow-up is forthcoming with my other hobby motivation hang-ups, and how I’m working through/past them. This post kind of turned into a couple of other things, which hopefully didn’t drive anyone away!