From Stressed To Progressed

 

Work has been a particular source of stress for the past couple of weeks. Nothing toxic, but we've spotted a few things that weren't working and have tried to fix them, but we've maybe tried to fix too much at once and its left us overworked and a bit stressed.

. . . 

Wait.

I just spent the weekend doing the exact opposite of that, and it didn't occur to me until I started typing the blog post. One of the unintentional side effects of having this blog has been that sometimes writing things down gives me clarity about stuff that's going on as I try and formulate the words to explain things.

Friday night, I sorted dinner, made a bit of a plan for the weekend, then did a few relaxing things to rest up. Saturday was all the essential house stuff - washing, dishes, shopping and so on. Sunday, I got up late, watched Annie's Morning Coffee live in my pyjamas, grabbing a shower then made lunch.

At this point, it's 1:30pm, and I probably have until 5:30pm before I need to write this blog and make dinner before Vampire: The Masquerade tabletop. I'm feeling overwhelmed, my brain is buzzing and I can't focus, but I have a list from earlier, so I get down to it.

First up, I photo all the remaining Deathwatch models that Squiggle's Studio painted for me, then put them away. Look at all that space! The photos will be processed and uploaded to the blog later over a few weeks, but for now, there's glorious space to Do Things.

First up is "assembly" on the Battletech Beginner's Box. Now, this is mostly just clearing off mould lines and adding basing material, but I also didn't like this peg on the Wolverine, so I carefully removed it with modelling cutters before tidying up a bit with a scalpel.

This bit wasn't too difficult, but the mould lines . . . weren't great. There were a lot of them, and this type of plastic doesn't give them up easily. With the models pre-assembled, sometimes you're getting into fiddly spots, too. I'd rate the Battletech plastic minis around the high end board game quality, but also, they're fine? I had been planning on using Contrast to paint these, but I'm reconsidering to more traditional methods as Contrast is super unforgiving and I don't think they'll pass that test.

I carefully added the basing paste. It needed to be pretty level as I'm planning that they'll be on "asphalt", which needs to be a lot neater than mud or sand! I also knocked out the two miniatures from Mammoth Miniatures I had lying around from Salute, but I'll grab a photo of them after they're undercoated.

And with that, time was up! My original plan had been to finish the Encounter Terrain models I had, along with the Reaper Bones Harefolk, but I was pretty much up to time, and felt it was better to finish on the high of "getting something finished" rather than having to abandon something half done.

Being busy at work had meant that a lot of house stuff I normally sort of an evening had gotten deferred to the weekend, and took up more of it than planned. Fortunately, the main rush period seems to be passed, and I'm back to just being Busy rather than Overwhelmed. I've booked a couple of days off next week to get some actual rest in.

I am feeling a lot more chill now, and the simply act of "making a list" and "working through it in order" went really well, even though I didn't get to the bottom of the list. Because the goal was "work down the list" rather than "do everything", my brain is feeling all "I achieved something" and not "I didn't get things done".

A random post on Facebook made me realise that the Infinity Dire Foes: Candy Cloud box had ceased production, and I had plans for using Kerr-nau in the future. I got it ordered in, and sold Rosie Munroe, as I don't have a use for her.

I also had another Kickstarter show up - in this case, the fourth Black Crab set. The core of them being these two huge horse skull head folks.

They're just delightful and I'm really keen to get them together and painted.

There were also three human sized villagers, cast in resin. The detail on these is lovely, and you can really see some progression from the sculptor's first pieces in the original Kickstarter.

And finally, some small little metal figures of weird creepy folk. Absolutely delightful.