Well it has been quite a while since I last put my fingers on the keyboard and wrote on my blog getting close to 6 months which really has been a bit too long. My modelling output in that same time period has been at about the same rate, zero. That has been for numerous reasons, my modelling mojo has been at its most fragile and continues to be so, I have know answers as to why however it is what it is and life has been very busy and bearing in mind that modelling is just a hobby I am sure that when things are ready one will return to it with earnest and I look forward to that. Life has changed considerably since my last post, I have got married to the always lovely and ever supportive partner in crime Kerry, I have become a Grandparent to a beautiful little girl and the sale of our house is close to completion, life is moving up, and life is good. Work continues to eat into large parts of my time but then mine is no ordinary job, it has stacks of responsibility and the need for it to be taken seriously. Life/work balance is an issue for all of us at some lever or another and mine is no different and I am sure that most of us come home at the end of the day worn out and tired, too tired to think about anything but kicking back and relaxing, just ready to collapse into bed ready for the next day.
I have called this blog post new beginnings and to a certain extent that is what it is, a new beginning for me, a time to think about the next phase of my life, the opportunity to buy ourselves a new house, a move away from where we currently are and maybe even start to enjoy life a bit more. It is also a chance for my modelling to have a new beginning, there are parts of the hobby that I view with a negative eye, my stash as an example, I have always seen it as something to ashamed of, shelves and shelves of kits that just sit there week in week out sometimes it gets added too, very rarely does it get reduced unless I sell some on eBay with no chance of some of them ever getting built. Recently as I had a chance to move some around I gradually began to change my mind and how I feel about the stash, yes there are some kits that I will probably never build however I have become quite proud of what has been amassed over the years. Before I moved into my current home, my stash was a handful of kits however this changed when I realised that there was a possibility that funds would be so short my possibility of buying new kits would be very low so I bought enough kits to last me, many of which I still have still unbuilt, as things turned out funds were not that short and the buying continued.
The shelf of shame is also something that I have felt a sense of shame about yet this was born out of a fluctuating amount of modelling time and signing up to too many campaigns on Armorama, I attempted to reduce that shelf of shame during the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020 this just helped me add to it and not really reduce it. I have come to terms with my shakey modelling output and the shelf of shame has proved to me that at least I have done some modelling even if that only consist of flitting from one project to the next, so all is not doom and gloom. The workroom, modelling room, or whatever we like to call them has caused me a certain amount of ire over the years, however it is a room that I am also proud of, it has evolved from a room with models stacked on the floor with a table and a chair to a kind of organised work space with storage, a nice work bench a spray booth a place for my books. All things for me to be proud of, a room that has evolved over the last nearly 19 years to something that I am happy with.
So what now?, what is next?, that I am not really sure of, in an ideal world a return to the workbench to start a period of modelling to get some models finished yet at this exact moment I do not know. I have sat today opening boxes from my shelf of half builds unable to muster the enthusiasm to start something, maybe if I could just add a bit of glue and I tried that on a Miniart B type lorry yet it was not quite enough to get those modelling juices flowing and the mojo to return. I know that it will come back, it always does the one thing that worries me is that it has been missing for quite a while now and lets hope that it has not gone forever because that would be sad. I have met some great people through the hobby and I know that most of them would not care too much if I was to rock up at shows with nothing to put on the table but I would feel that I was not contributing and I was there just there as a hanger on what is the point of going to a model show and being a member of a modelling club if you are not actually a modeller, I would feel a fraud. So here is to new beginnings, whatever they may be and whatever guise they come in and fingers crossed I will be back at the bench very soon.
The Average Modeller
The Average Modeller 