Hobby Mojo

[nozza_uk]

I'm sort off out of my slump.

Mixing it up on a weekly basis. Last week I put together an MDF kit, this week I'm working on half a dozen dwarfs. More importantly, I'm not feeling bad about not doing any hobby work and I feel (mentally) better for it.

Also, I'm actually finishing off some long overdue projects - which in turn contributes to a positive mental attitude!

[has.been]

Good on yer! 

[Cypher226]

As every else has said, we all go through this.  I'm finding terrain much more rewarding than figures at the moment, so that's what I'm working on when I get a chance.  Mixing things up definitely helps.

[Daeothar]

Yep; mojo comes and goes, it's a fact of life I've come to terms with long ago. You have to, or otherwise you'll soon burn out completely. The hard part is not beating yourself up over not being productive.

I tend to paint every mini I start to the best of my abilities, which means that progress is quite slow. But I can live with this.

My personal problem with not getting any painting done, is not as much lack of mojo, as a lack of energy. I blame it on me getting older, and jobs becoming ever more demanding. Also, being a parent certainly is draining too!

When I was still flying solo, I could basically paint every night of the week. Not to say I did, but I could. This gave me a lot of freedom, and not painting one night because I wanted to go out, or watch a movie, or even just lounge and do nothing was not a big deal; plenty of evenings to do so when the mood struck.

But then I got into a (new) relationship, got married, and eventually became a father, and each of these steps, as incremental as they were, siphoned off available time to paint. To the current point where missing the one night a week I have available for painting (next to actually gaming, RPG-night, the gym, quality time with the wife and daughter, social commitments etc) has a huge impact on my output.

Because all of a sudden, it completely destroys my output when I don't feel like picking up a brush on that one night I actually have the opportunity to. As a consequence, I almost feel guilty for not painting at that time, because I tend to set goals for myself in regards to my yearly painting output, which get hit hard if I don't regularly paint.

See; I want to paint 100 28mm miniatures (or equivalent) per year (in 2021, I made this number for the very first time! Yay me ).

I also found that I'm not as much feeling guilty about not being productive, as that I regularly find myself slightly irritated with the fact. Often, my lack of painting is caused by me being thoroughly exhausted after a long day of working, making dinner, doing the dishes, and then working through the loooong bedtime ritual of the little lady And by the end of this, I'm finally free to do what I want, but I'm too tired to do anything but sit and watch a series or a movie (but often there's too little time in the evening to watch a full length one).

So I used to be able to paint whenever I fancied, but now, with so much other commitments, the stars must align just right for me to be able to get some painting time in. And even then I can get frustrated because I can't get enough done in one sitting. And this can also completely kill my mojo.

But eventually I found that re-arranging the lead mountain, tidying up my gaming room, prepping projects, or even just planning hypothetical projects during those energy-sparse evenings have their merit as well, and can actually be satisfying too.

Forcing yourself to do something productive and hobby related each day, even if it's just 10 minutes or half an hour doing the things above also helps feeling good about the hobby in the long run. Sometimes I just stand for 5 minutes looking at my display cabinets, thinking of how to expand the collection(s) within, and even those moments are valuable!

The important part has been repeated over and over in this thread, and it very much holds true; it's just a hobby and don't beat yourself up over not being able to perfectly make use of the allotted time. Just enjoy those moments when it all comes together

[Spinal Tap]

Bit of a ramble I'm afraid as I've been giving this quite a lot of thought over the past few days.

I've had plenty of motivation to build and paint; I find that so long as I don't have a massive queue of miniatures to paint then I'm pretty motivated all the time and love jumping between figures and terrain.

If I get a huge pile to paint though then I definitely get stressed and lose the will to get anything done pretty quickly.

As I tend to paint single figures as well as I can and am happy for the larger groups of enemy grunts to be less perfect, this allows me to consider a group of 5 minions as a single figure.

So, as an example, at present I have 8 Burrows and Badgers miniatures to paint as characters and a box of 20 Skaven, 15 to paint as zombies and 5 as civilians.

This, to my way of thinking, gives me a total of 12 items to paint which presents no stress at all. If the number increases much above 20 items I tend to fixate on getting stuff done as quickly as possible, more interested in what's next than what I'm actually painting.

However, I have been totally lacking in motivation for playing either of the 2 solo campaigns I've recently started, one fantasy and one sci fi, although I've been more than happy to play any of the board games I own, either in groups or solo and to play at the club against others.

The conclusion I have reached is that I tend to do a blow by blow account and pics to post on here, and/or Facebook, which completely ruins the flow of the story whist playing, and takes a fair bit of effort afterwards just to post.

I am going to change up this by returning to what I used to do, play my game, get immersed in the story, maybe take a few pics and write a brief summary of the story details and direction by hand, in a book, for me to reflect on as the tale unfolds.

Posting online is to be restricted to my building and painting, both to share with anyone interested and to keep a record of my projects in one place.

I'll try to remember to call back in a couple of months to let you know if this was a complete failure, a raging success, or something in between.

[nozza_uk]

I actually thought your ramble was eloquent and echoed how I feel too.

I've had plenty of motivation to build and paint; I find that so long as I don't have a massive queue of miniatures to paint then I'm pretty motivated all the time and love jumping between figures and terrain.

If I get a huge pile to paint though then I definitely get stressed and lose the will to get anything done pretty quickly.

This, to my way of thinking, gives me a total of 12 items to paint which presents no stress at all. If the number increases much above 20 items I tend to fixate on getting stuff done as quickly as possible, more interested in what's next than what I'm actually painting.

Your three comments above hit the nail on the head for me.

I find the days are long gone where I could spend a week painting a figure and I'm at the point where if it looks ok on the table then I happy. As a result, I try to breakdown my lead mountain hillock to groups of no more than 5 - 10 to keep my enthusiasm up. Also, with life beginning to return to some form of normality, I'm feeling ok if a week goes by without any hobby activity (I'm assume ordering doesn't count  ).

[tikitang]

Is it just me or does anyone else find that their hobby mojo rises and falls?

Mine rises and falls like a rollercoaster. High highs and low lows over a very short space of time, but sometimes things get so low I just get right off and don't come back for a year or more.

[nozza_uk]

Managed to pick up Covid on a trip to the office and man I do not want to roll a dice, let alone pick up a paint brush at the moment!

My hobby mojo is so far gone, I think it must off this planet. 

[Daeothar]

Get well soon.

Speaking from experience, I can indeed attest that being down with the sickness is hell on your mojo...

[has.been]

It will be a sign of recovery when you start thinking of the hobby again.

[Robosmith]

I have a kind of rule with myself that I spend 30 minutes a day doing hobby. Sometimes i spend it cleaning up, sometimes on painting and sometimes on assembling/priming miniatures. Sometimes I only spend 30 minutes other times it turns into hours. Depending on mojo and actual time available.

I find that once I get into a streak it really helps with the motivation. 30 minutes spent hobbying is still better than none. Even if it is just cleaning your hobby area.

And I try to have several small'ish projects on deck so that I can switch to whatever takes my fancy.

This is great advice. Another way to get motivation up is to "cheat" and achieve things easy. Using contrast style paints to quickly paint up a lizardman or whatever is a great way to feel you accomplished something. It's only 20 minutes or painting but you get a finished piece ready for the table. A few of those and you have a warband and you start to snowball quickly. Doesn't take much investment but it builds up to feel like you did something way bigger than it's parts.

[Golgotha]

Do not think about it - just put something on to watch - pick up a brush and just start painting. Before you know it you will be painting like the rest of us again. You can do it we believe in you.

[eilif]

I find it tough to paint minis without the impetus of an upcoming game for which the figure or unit will be used. I can dive into a big terrain project and often get it finished rather quickly, but minis take more mental effort for me.

I do agree with folks here who say, just start painting.

[manic _miner]

 Got some figures cleaned of mould lines Yesterday then onto bases.Today was the turn of some 15mm MDF buildings from Dragonfrog.Three Orc huts and two Dwarf buildings.Nice little kits.

 Now to see what Tomorrow will bring.

 Been digging through boxes the past few Days and found some nice miniatures hidden away.Nice to have options of what to go for next.

[NotifyGrout]

I've had a lot of real-life chaos getting in my way lately, but I did treat myself to a Warpath Asterian Strike Force because I finally got brought on permanently at my job. I've assembled the whole thing, minus a few heat-treatment issues with restic models. Even used a few 3D-printed bases.

On a side note, if you need robot sentries/security drones/generic bad guy troops, the Asterian Marionettes are great. You'll have enough arms and drone bits left over for kitbashing, too.