Some days I question my involvement in this hobby; whether it is worth the time I put in.
Assembling six Warlord Games Orcs (nee Wargames Factory models) last night brought on the latest existential crisis.
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| A previous set of the little bastards |
Let me go on record now as saying I've concluded these are horrible models, the seven or so pieces needed for each figure require so much effort to assemble, and come with no indication of which parts assemble different basic poses. Ninety minutes of effort to assemble six models is not my idea of fun or a useful investment of time.
But the real question was, 'why am I even doing this?'
Certainly, it's not as if I
need the extra models. I have thousands, painted and unpainted. Moreover, Jesus Christ, I'm a grown man with thousands of toy soldiers. Some days I have doubts about what I'm choosing to do with my time. Why is that?
I've talked about the dilemma of hobbies before, Wargaming is not the most expensive thing I do, but it is the one that causes me most doubt, despite being the one that with its' associated activities - board games, assembling and painting models - takes up the most of my time. I'm old enough to be from a time when this sort of activity simply wasn't cool in any form, and I think I'm scarred by that. However overall I think I just go through phases of, well...
Disliking my hobby.
Which is weird, as it has definitely helped keep me sane. And I really mean, sane.
There's been long periods of pretty shitty times in my past where the only escape was burying myself in a 12 hour painting session of impossible Napoleonic uniforms, day-long games with friends, solo-games at home, reading up on background/history; it was always something that could block the awful side of the brain from getting a word in edge-ways.
But other days; when you are surrounded by your tribe at its' most ugly, least charitable, and see the rest of the world going about its' business; the days when you don't feel you are personally fighting off the grasping spirits of beyond. Those occasions at the end of a dreadful three hour game of torture with a pedantic, win-at-any-costs, netlist, rules-as-written, neckbeard whose unpainted army of scarcely assembled broken-rules filth has permitted him the entire time to gloat in an orgy of destruction of your own thematically/historically crafted force; before proceeding to tell you in the most patronising way possible how you could've done better. Those days when you've given yourself a bad back and a dozen cuts from assembling shitty plastic figures, dizzy on the fumes of a chemical lab's-worth of noxious glues, only to realise you now have the paint the little sods as well.
On those days, I want out.
But I don't, I sell a few things, go quiet for a while, find other things to do. It isn't quite an addiction, but eventually like an old friend it is there for you when you need it. And you pick up where you left off somehow.
Despite how much I
can hate my hobby. It has a place in my life.
I still need it.
It is just difficult to see why sometimes.
Normal service will resume next time people....
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