Happy New Year Everyone, And Welcome Back!

Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone!

The blessings of The Grandfather be upon you...
(they sure as hell were upon me...)

Welcome to 2024, and welcome back to my blog! It's been a while since I posted anything here and I've been meaning to get back to it for a while so, during my (somewhat enforced) downtime over the festive period, I decided to knuckle down and actually do something about it, and here we are! To be honest, I'm glad to see the back of 2023, it's not been a great year for me. Don't get me wrong, there's been no major disasters or upheavals, and the year has had its share of high points but, on average, it's not gone the way I wanted it to. health issues, bad planning and organising on my part and various other things have meant that my work has suffered a lot. I've missed deadlines, let people down and, frankly, I've nobody to blame but myself, although there have often been extenuating circumstances beyond my control. All of this has caused spiralling depression in the last quarter of the year, which I've struggled to pull myself out of and the year has ended with a horrendous bout of food poisoning that began on December 26th and which, as I write this on new year's eve, I still haven't fully recovered from. So, all in all, not a flagship year for me.

But it's not all doom and gloom. If nothing else, my enforced absence from the painting table since Christmas Eve has given me the opportunity to step back and switch off from worrying about all the outstanding jobs I've got to finish (there's not much point stressing about something when there's literally nothing you can do to about it) and it's turned out to be exactly what I needed to clear my head and regroup. For the last couple of months I've been dreading going up to my painting table, and not enjoying what I've been doing while I've been there. Now, having had this time out, I'm actually really looking forward to getting back to painting, both on my commissions and my own work. I feel motivated again for the first time in months, which is why I felt it was a good time to restart the blog. Part of why I hadn't done anything with it for so long was that I just didn't feel inspired by my work to write anything about it. I'm hoping that's changed. So, I've dusted off a load of half-finished, barely started or just ideas-in-the-making articles and I'm hoping I'll be able to maintain a regular posting schedule. Please keep checking in on Mondays (or sign up to get notifications) and let me know what you think of how I'm getting on. Suggestions for articles are always welcome, too.  

Something that I have managed to do, which I've been meaning to get done for ages now, is to get all my collection of minis organised, more or less. I've done army lists for Kill Teams and Combat Patrols for 40k; sorted my Age Of Sigmar stuff into Warcry warbands and potential starter armies for whatever they're going to come up with as the AOS version of Combat Patrols in 4th Edition; and sorted out my old fantasy miniatures into potential small starter armies to throw together when The Old World drops. I've even sorted out lots of my old lead into a bucket list of classic minis I want to paint just for the sheer hell of it. I know none of this is actually going to help get any of these projects actually done, but it organises it better in my headspace, and that's really important for a hobby butterfly like me. This way, if I feel like dipping into one of these boxes for a bit of hobby time, at least I'll know why I'm painting up Model X, or Unit Y. Giving everything its own little bit of purpose is, to me, a strong motivator. 

And on the subject of motivation, I'm going to be starting my painting/hobby streak again, trying to maintain a daily post of my progress on commissions and personal projects on the social medias, so please keep an eye out for those, as well. I had a really good response to the last streak, and some positive feedback from people who'd been inspired to do the same thing (not that I'm taking any credit for the idea of the streak, just take a look at #thestreak (or any variant of it) on Instagram and you'll see dozens of creatives who've been doing it much longer than me.)

Right, well, that's about it for now. All that remains is for me to wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous 2024. Hopefully I'll see you all next week with a proper article!*

Thanks for reading!

Stu

p.s. if you like what I'm doing here, a click on the link below and the donation of the price of a pot of paint would be a wonderful gesture. I'm thinking of adding special stuff to the Ko-fi, like competitions and prize draws, so it'd be a good idea to at least have a look there now and then 😁 

*With proper footnotes...