A Journey Without a Destination

From a miniatures painting standpoint, or just a hobby standpoint in general, I have the attention span of a flea. Always have, and in my mid 40's, almost certainly always will. I have been aware of this for a long time, of course, but have fought it. I have always put pressure on myself to try to focus on working on one project at a time, making significant strides towards completing something before moving on to the next bit of "ooh shiny!". Generally I have failed, and felt that I should do a better job of focusing my energies. It is hard for a person of my nature not to look at the blogs of some of my hobby compatriots who have the ability to do precisely what I do not and not feel a degree of wistfulness. Wistfulness that I cannot be more like the guy who lays out his 1,000 figures of unpainted lead for XYZ army and states with conviction "I will do nothing else until I finish painting these, which must be by Spring of next year". And then accomplishes his goal. I will never be that guy.

So my painting goal, and hobby goal in general, for 2012 is to embrace my inner attention-deficit self and do whatever I feel like, whenever I feel like it, with absolutely no goal or deadline in mind. I will revel in my lack of focus.

Over the last few weeks, I have painted in small chunks of time with some regularity after the girls have gone to bed. I have worked on:

• Ottoman medieval heavy infantry
• Ottoman janissary archers
• Warhammer 40k tyranids (sci fi "bugs" like in Alien)
• Warhammer 40k Imperial Guard troops (for generic sci fi "bug" hunters)
• Warhammer Empire knights (just because I like the figures)
• Warhammer Undead army troops of various kinds (again just because I like the figures, and wouldn't mind doing some medieval-ish Night of the Living Dead skirmish game at some point)
• Seven Years War artillery and crew

Many of these can be seen on my painting table above.

I've also spent a lot of time re-basing 15mm Napoleonics to prepare for a LaSalle game we are going to have tomorrow night.

I like my new approach. And given that this new approach is really no approach at all, I think I can actually stick to this one...