Paint & Ramble: Hobby Pressure

Ultimate Goblin Mode

This is my new favorite way to paint. Hunched over, ultimate goblin mode, extreme back pain. Don’t know why, but it’s strangely comfortable until it’s not.

The Hobby Pressure Spiral

I was talking to the Ice King about this concept of hobby pressure. You get so many ideas and projects in your head.

You only have 10 minutes or 5 minutes, waiting for a meeting to start. You think: I can’t paint for real, but I could build a guy, right? This is progress. Better to do it than not.

So you build a guy. Then three guys today. Five guys tomorrow. Suddenly you have a whole second army ready to paint when you haven’t even touched the actual project you were excited about.

The Vicious Cycle

Now you’re excited about the project you just built. You get an hour to paint, so you prime a whole army at once. Then you’re back in that point where you use the time you could have painted something to prime the last thing you built.

You do this for five years and you get a ton of half-built, half-primed, half-painted army projects going nowhere.

Now I’ve found time to paint, and I sit there with so many cool things looking at me. How do I pick one? I spend my whole painting time just thinking about that.

The Purge

I’ve got to be more disciplined. In the hobby. In my life. I’ve gained 15 pounds since starting the channel. I was not a small dude before. Got to get exercise back in. Making videos has added a ton to my life, no regrets, but now I really need the discipline and time management.

More Than Just a Hobby

If you’re new to this, calling it a “hobby responsibility” might sound ridiculous. But if you got into this as a kid and it became a lifestyle hobby—this is where you find joy, this is your creative expression, this is where you fill your bucket back up.

We’re artists here. This isn’t just sitting down to play a video game. This is my spiritual practice. This is what I do to survive.

It keeps you sane—until it doesn’t. Until you have a pile of things that weigh you down and own you. This thing that should be nothing but joy becomes stress.

Arbitrary Deadlines

Even finishing these goblins before October was an arbitrary deadline. I don’t have anybody to play Old World with. I’m going to use the hobgoblin solo rules to play myself. It doesn’t actually have to be painted. I could start playing as soon as it’s based.

For some reason, I prefer to stress myself out about it. That doesn’t make any sense.

The Plan for Next Year

I’m going to:

• Sell stuff I have no chance of painting this year
• Sell stuff I could easily buy again later
• Keep the sentimental stuff and painted display pieces
• Go into next year with a clean slate and no hobby pressure

For next year:

• Pick a single Warmachine faction and stick to it
• Warmachine is my main game
• Buy anything Sean Sutter sells (plastic battle pig set, Rebelle Blade)
• Back anything from Trent at Miscast
• No big major purchases
• Everything I have has to be painted before purchasing anything else
• Focus on getting really good at playing one army
• Maybe only paint 10-20 models, but every single one display quality level

No more commissions next year (except the one already taken). I want to do something else that makes money in a small amount of time so I can pursue creative things without putting a price tag on them.