Balancing Time

How often do you hear the phrase “real life got in the way?” The plastic modelling hobby can be a time consuming one, you’ll usually read in FSM’s Workbench Reviews how many hours building a particular kit consumed, and those numbers are sometimes quite high. Then there are competition builders who are known to invest thousands of hours in a single project.

Where do they get them? We all have “real” lives (as if the hobby that brings us satisfaction and bolsters us against the trials and pitfalls of “real” life is any less real) and we need to share our time among our commitments. So much for work, so much for family (plus commuting, eating, sleeping…) All of these come before the hobby. I strongly suspect many of us use hobby hours as “get your head straight” time -- way to shut out the clamour and put things back in perspective.

But there’s a balance at work there as well. You can become so involved in a particular train of thought or endeavour that it’s hard to switch tracks to the hobby more, so when you find you have some time available you can’t mentally make the switch and use it productively. I currently have a grand total of 29 models in various stages of completion, some of which have been shelf-queens for many years, but can I find the ability to jump tracks, now Australia’s five-day long weekend has arrived? It isn’t easy. My brain is stuck on my PhD, and while that’s a good thing, I would really like to complete one or maybe two models over this national holiday, as well as re-tally field data and tabulate results. It goes a way to explaining why it’s been three weeks since I posted here…

I was once chatting with a friend about the long list of scratchbuild subjects I would like to do, and he asked “how long do you plan on living?” Meaning, it can take years to finish a single ambitious project, as I well know. My answer was “several hundred years,” which fits my cosmological outlook, certainly at this point in life, and tends to validate still collecting kits when the stash is on its way toward 1100. This year will see my largest completion output ever … but it’s not easy getting my head out of professional space and back into hobby-land.

Maybe you just have to have priorities!

I Know Where Everything Is… Really!

Quick! How many unfinished models can you spot in the picture above? No, it’s not easy, is it?

Finishing a couple of projects calls for clearing the bench to set up proper lighting and get the gallery photos, and it’s only then that you realise what a pigstye you’ve been working among. I mean, some people have clean, neat, tidy work benches – but so far I’ve not been one of them, and in fairness to myself I can’t say my hobby has really suffered. It’s odd the way the brain maps your bench, you seem to know which quadrant you put any particular tool down in last, and whereabouts in what chronological order down which stack you’ll probably find things sandwiched together.

Then comes the phase where you clean the bench, tidy everything up and then you’ve had it because you can’t find a thing!

Acrylic paints in that box, enamels in that box, tools back in the tool drawer, scratchbuilding supplies back in their drawer, sort bits from three open kits back into the boxes they belong in… Take stock of which project(s) to finish next.

Do you ever loose things completely? Other than into the jaws of the carpet monster? I don’t think I ever have, unless you count the pairs of scissors that keep vanishing, but that’s natural enough. Scissors always vanish, always have and always will. When it comes to kit bits, it’s a rare one that’s flown the coup, and sometimes due to plain bad luck – thinking that tiny part that fell off and was put carefully aside is actually a mote of dust and blowing it casually who-knows-where a split second before remembering it was a part to be reattached. That’s dumb, but probably not the dumbest thing one can do on a modeller’s bench…

With New Year’s Day it’s fitting to clean the bench. When I have a proper workshop I’ll be able to keep it neater (I say, smiling hopefully), but for now, I’ll make the best of the considerable space and resources I’ve managed to assemble, and allow myself an uncluttered workspace slightly larger than the A4-size cutting mat that forms my centrepiece at this time.

So Happy New Year, and let’s hope for some bench time as the world swings back into the working week as of Monday!