I have the good fortune to have a hobby room of my own in our house. This means I have a dedicated space for building and painting and a fixed gaming table in the centre of this room. Lots of shelve space for my models and scenery complete this hobby valhalla. As wonderful as this is it also presents me with a problem. I have all the space I need and lots of models and game systems I want to play with. And since I don’t need to tidy up when I am done I have the space to work on several projects at once. Which I do. While working on one thing I get exited over another and start on that as well. As a result the whole room tends to be cluttered with all sorts of projects in various stages of construction. Once in a while I have to clear some space in order to actually play a game, but most gaming I do nowadays is done at the club.
At the moment I am working on the modular tunnel system (as you can read in other blogposts), preparing a Haradrim army, building a 40K Thousand Sons force, painting more models for the pirate campaign as well as the Tabletop World buildings to complete the Tortuga table and painting several Tallarn models (which is a never ending story). Aside from that I started building the Dark Elves force for another blogpost idea together with someone else (a sort of Tale of Two Gamers project to start playing Kings of War). More is waiting since I have collected all Necromunda models over the years and so far I have only painted an Escher and Ratskin gang. Then there is the range of the classic Warhammer Quest models who need paint and all the collected models from Gorkamorka as well. Aside from the models I bought just for painting there are other projects which still need attention such as a Dark Eldar flying force, 5th edition Dogs of War, a Catachan force, the Jailbirds army from the first Raging Heroes kickstarter, a huge wood elves and Skaven army (both 5th edition era) and a sizable collection of Lizardmen, Dwarfs and Chaos from the same period. And then there is all the scenery to build.
Even with enough time in the world I will very likely never be finished before I kick the bucket, but I guess I am too much of a collector to be bothered by that idea. But I do tend to try and spend as much time as I can in my mancave. That time is limited because I have a very nice family who also needs attention an a regular basis. Combined with work and other social things in life this does limit the hobby time considerably. I have the privilege to have married a great woman who understand my drive and passion for the hobby and who tries to give me as much time to indulge my urge to play with toy soldiers, but still it can cause some friction here and there. My eldest daughter is now 12 and participates in the hobby from time to time for a few years, playing games mostly. The youngest is too young to understand yet, but the middle one is three and has a lively interest already. I love them all and I therefore try to balance my time between them, the hobby and work.
Daddy’s little ‘helper’
Several of my friends have kids as well, and also find themselves with less time to spend on the hobby. Such is life, you grow and other priorities come along. We do not regret our path that led us here, far from it. It just gets harder to get things finished. And since I have too many projects I am working on simultaneously I tend to get fewer things finished. Just as well I have a hobby room where I can just close the door behind me without having to tidy up first. I am one happy gamer actually.
How are others around the world dealing with too much projects or finding a good balance between family and hobby time?
