New Year

Every year I eat too much for Christmas.

Every year I look at all the awesome stuff I get.

Every year, around this time, I start looking forward and thinking;

How are the next 12 months going to be different?

I’m not talking I’ll drink less, eat healthier or work out more. Last year I took a pledge to:

• Finish Massive Darkness
• Repaint all of Zombicide
• Build a Gaming Table to start playing some skirmish games, namely Circle of Blood, Rangers of Shadow Deep and Otherworld Fantasy Skirmish.

I worked it out and this boiled down to painting 8 minis per week, playing 3 games per month, and doing 1 craft project per week.

I have given myself KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to do my hobby. This is my way to measure my productivity to put a value against my enjoyment.  “Well, last week I must have enjoyed myself because I painted 7 minis.”  I made my hobby that is my escape, my world, my way of winding down into a job.

In the last year, I have seen and listened and read so many things about burning out.  I know I’ve been there before and I pondered why am I doing this to myself?  When looking at other blogs I’ve seen posts setting New Year’s hobby resolutions.

Typically, the hobby resolutions look something like the below.

• Play X amount of games
• Try X amount of games
• Go deep with x amount of games -What does this even mean?
• Paint X amount of minis per time zone

Ok, some of this is more of a board game side of things but it still applies.  How many times have you boiled your hobby down to pure numbers on a page that you check off?  For me, it’s the antithesis of fun.

I have seen people do it with the following mindsets:

• “Yep that’s 1 game down now I can get on with my actual life”
• “Ok cool unit is painted brushes away, clear the desk, next unit next month”

Yes, these are extreme examples, but I want you to think how many times have you done this?  Ok looking back and seeing what you can achieve painting 365.25 minis in a year is pretty awesome.  Don’t get me wrong here, if you are one of those people you are amazing!

But would you be painting because you want to or because you have to?  I mean I have come home to my house and my wife and baby, who for some reason adore me, and there I am annoyed because I haven’t had the time to paint the mini I promised myself I would complete.

When did my hobby become a chore? When did it take precedence over my life?  When did I start running away from it?

The same with gaming where you play once per week.  Do you play the same game, with the same people, with the same army, and the same missions?  Can there be other ways of making it fresh and new each week?

Back in 8th Edition Warhammer Fantasy, my Ogre Kingdoms army was terrible.  My army was unpainted and defeated.  I made a hobby pledge back then to play more because playing more games meant I’d get better.  I sold that army for a pretty penny.  In the end, it was half painted and in need of a victory.  By now, I hope they have gorged on the finest soldiers the Empire could muster.

In retrospect, what I should have done while working for Games Workshop was use the opportunity to try different armies and different tactics that would have helped my army of choice because I could have learned something. But that’s probably another story for another time.

How can you keep gaming fresh if you game regularly with people you know quite well?  Do 52 games a year just tick your box?  Would you be gaming because, eventually, you’ll win with some lucky rolls?  When was the last time you played a game and changed the composition of your force?  Certain companies are great at making you buy more stuff for the New Year by telling you that you need a new army and leave last year in the dust.

New You

There’s a reason for this New Year means New, Fresh, Different. The whole idea of this resolution thing is to stop feeling so guilty about you being you. But, I don’t want to change who I am.  I just want to paint more and finish my projects.

Looking back at this I regularly set myself up for failure…

This year I moved out of my rented house back to my parents, was part of the management staff of a new supermarket opening, had a baby girl (she often features in my gaming shots), moved into a new house and also moved jobs to an office environment (which took a lot of work to change my retail/engineering ways).

On top of this, I wanted to paint all the minis and play all the games!  Why am I saying all this?

Well, I experienced something that you all know well and good…burn out.  I rushed paints jobs and tried to rush games so I could tick off the number only to turn around and not like what I had done.  I set lofty unrealistic goals to achieve something and didn’t take into account that life uhm..finds a way.

A lot of it was naiveté, but I hope you can relate when boiling your hobby down to numbers and results, you remove the enjoyment and you stop learning and growing.  You become stagnant.

All of a sudden the dreaded boredom sets in, and that’s when you look at the mini in your hand, sigh, put in in a box and put the telly on. Then a few months later you’ll put a plea out to your favourite Facebook group, friend’s or gaming group to get some help to get out of your hobby slump. At the end of the day, all of us love toy soldiers for our reasons but very few of us make a living off an incredibly fun and enjoyable hobby.

This isn’t a bad thing, we don’t rely on our hobby to pay for our life.  Let’s look toward the next year, a decade not with numbers but try to look for opportunities to have more fun with a hobby that we own!  This doesn’t mean deadlines should be chucked out the window, they are great for some projects but maybe setting something with a purpose.

New Ways

Realistically what does the New Year hold for you next year?

• Are there new tactics you are looking to try?

Swap Armies with a buddy

• Are there new rules you want to learn?

Try some campaigns that allow for growth and adapted rules

• Are there new painting techniques you want to do?

Get painting and keep trying new things. I’ve probably got around 20 minutes a day, which is quite a good time frame to focus on something specific.

• Are there some minis that need painting?

Be honest with yourself and plan it out.

• Are you looking to compete in a tournament?

The perfect way to get a deadline together. Especially with a buddy.

I’ve not got a “Resolution” right now but I have an aim, maybe that is a resolution I don’t know anymore, everything gets so confusing.

I’m buying fewer minis and painting more this year. But buying minis, oddly enough, motivates me to do something. I mean sometimes you see a mini and you just get excited to paint. In the past, I’ve bought a mini and it’s got me out of a slump and I’ve tackled some backlog.

Let get down to a simple thing!

Next year avoid burnout and find and way to reinvigorate my desire to paint without new minis.

The way I am going to do that is by being organised:

• What and When is my next game?
• What minis do I need for it?
• What ideas do I have for the paint job?

Something I have found cool is Goobertown Hobbies Random Mini Box- I think this will add to my motivation. If I get bored why not paint a random mini instead of spending money on a new one? 

Other things I would like to do by the end of next year:

• Introduce my wife to a fantasy skirmish game at least once.
• Have painted minis and terrain according to encounters I write for Dungeons and Dragons, but this may move to Warhammer Fantasy RPG because I just love the Old World

I’ll enjoy my hobby by removing the work and keeping the fun.  If I get anything else that’s a bonus.  Just remember you don’t tackle the mountain of Grey overnight.  When your hobby owns you is when you burn out.

What does your hobby do for you? How will that New Year’s feelin’ get your hobby motor purring?

I hope that the year goes well!

I have just found out I’ll be going to a Seige Studios Painting Tuition for my birthday present.  This means I need to make sure my hobby game is tight as a thank you to my wonderful family.

Next up I’ll be looking at planning for paint jobs.  Normally I just grab random colours, so it’s going to be a complete change of pace for me.