An opportunity to take stock

This is the 250th post on my blog! With a month and a half to go until the end of the year, I thought this would be an excellent time to have a bit of a look as to how my hobby is going, both in the general sense, and also taking into account the painting targets I set myself at the start of the year.

What were my targets?

• Not include models I'm selling in my tracking systems next year
  Done
• Take part in the Independent Characters Hobby Progress Challenge
  Started but abandoned at the halfway mark, having failed the 1,000 points challenge
• Finish the blasted Collodi crew
  Not yet done - but three models to base left
• 500 point Warriors of Chaos Army
  Not even started
• All of Salute 2012's purchases painted
  Not started
• No new systems (Infinity, this means you) until I've fully painted one of my other skirmish games up
  Abject and catastrophic failure due to Operation: Icestorm

I've also set myself some mid year targets around sorting out all the things I am supposed to be doing for other people. I've got that list down to three things now.

That said, I've got a reasonable amount painted. There's only been one month so far when I haven't finished a project, and often I've gotten two or three things done.

Part of this is just to try and get disordered thoughts in my head down into writing - I suspect this isn't the most interesting thing for other people to read. But it's useful for my brain, so I'm doing it.

What should I do for the rest of the year?

It's really become clear to me that over-planning or queuing up too much work just leads to me missing targets and getting disappointed with myself. I also have a massive tendency of over-estimating what I'll get done in a particular time scale. I need to remember this if I ever consider taking up commission painting - I'd be completely terrible at it.

Right now, my painting table is a mess of a whole ton of "in progress" projects. I'm not going to finish them all this year, but really, my first priority is just getting them each to a stage where I can leave them and pick them up later. In short, I get myself to a place where I am not constantly trying to catch up with my own ill conceived plans. Instead, I should pick up a thing, do a thing, and put it down again. Probably with a side project to distract me if it's a big thing. Fourteen "in progress" projects is a recipe for disaster.

Neil Gaiman's "Make Good Art" speech talks about moving towards the mountain. Rather than trying to plan out my entire route, I'm instead going to simply remind myself of where I'm going. As part of my blogging, I'll be putting up a project page, linking to the various projects I have ongoing, with a list of things that need doing - be that my Imperial Guard, the new Infinity stuff I have, or whatever.

This means that I won't end up committing to, say, spending three or four months blitzing my Imperial Guard only to be super enthused about Infinity and constantly day dreaming about assembling them (as I currently am).

The few remaining "other people" projects will get done, along with a rather time sensitive "secret Santa" kit bash at my local store. That one will get no coverage on the blog as I need to keep secret what I'm doing, although I may post a Christmas picture of what I receive...

Hopefully, this new way of thinking about what I'm doing will help me get more done. There should be less regretting what I'm currently working on and more employing bursts of enthusiasm on whatever my 'flavour of the month' is at that particular moment. How could this possibly go wrong?