So I'm at a real quandary here. and despite blogging this, I doubt anyone will really read this, and I don't blame anyone for that; this is probably a little too personal. But I have a feeling that many of you have gone through this very thing.
In this "State of the Union", I am going to reveal some things about me that will make it easy for people to doxx me, and I'm going to rely on the sheer unremarkable nature of this blog to protect me from that. I am just a guy who lives in the Chicago area. I'm a dad of two teens who are NOT into nerdy pursuits (nor is my wife), but that's just fine. I work in the field of user experience design for a major insurance company, and I've been in this field for a long time. I'm also a musician and "composer".
I'm at a real crossroads here at the first quarter of 2019. I have an alarming wall of shame. Right now, as I write this, I'm looking at unopened boxes of Necromunda, Kill Team, Deathwatch Overkill and two Dark Imperiums sitting on the floor. They are on the floor because my shelf of shame is completely full of 40k sprues. And this is not even taking into account my pile of Warmachine and Hordes stuff along with about a dozen other game systems. I've pretty much stopped buying models, but that doesn't make things any better.
But I'm thinking that I'm not really that different than many of you out there. I've seen many walls of shame on social media and a lot of grey models on the tabletop. My two closest FLGSes have shuttered for good. Writing music and intermittent games of Texas Hold'em compete with 40k and my family, of course, for my non-working time. I am also overweight, and at my age, that needs to be addressed. There are old dudes, and there are fat dudes, but rarely are there old fat dudes.
So, as the title says, what now? I've pretty much let this blog die...it was all over the place, and although some of my posts still generate decent traffic, I have not given it the love it deserves. I've already mentioned my lack of forward push in terms of painting. And my recording studio is seeing a lot of me noodling but no serious playing. Oh, and I just checked again, still overweight.
I know that NewYears is the worst time for general life changes, but I just have to get going. So I started a very mild diet on Jan 1. I also took three days and cleaned up my painting workstation, and I'm in a spreadsheet to plan out my painting. I think I am going to try keeping a schedule to field 4-5 different Kill Teams...I mean, I have the models. I’ve already gotten a start on this, and because it’s not overwhelming, I’ve made some progress.
I'm also going to revamp the look of the blog...it's very dated. Stay tuned.
Do you have any resolutions for 2019? How are they going so far?
Don't feel bad. Losing weight is a marathon so keep bashing away. As for hobbies and time - there's never enough of either. Don't force yourself, don't set a target. Just enjoy it when you want to.
ReplyDeleteBeing blunt - stop being so hard on yourself.
Ironically it was getting serious about poker that made a lot of the rest of my life fall into place. The discipline needed to log sessions correctly, think about math, do hand reviews and try to improve led me to better organize the rest of my time and realize just how much of it I was wasting. Don't stress too much. Just start small and do the thing you've chosen consistently, whether it's walking for 30 minutes, playing 100 hands of poker, painting for an hour, or whatever. Don't try to make a drastic change all at once.
ReplyDelete