Sunday Sermon: Learning to say no!

We all suffer from varying degrees of what psychoanalysts call "shiny toy syndrome" (it's not actually a condition in the DSM V, but it should be). Be honest with yourself, and I'm sure at some point in your hobbying career you will have procured for yourself far too much crap. More than you could ever possibly need, or indeed paint in a reasonable time-frame. We've all done it. I know for a cold hard certain fact that I have. It's a curse most geeks will have to carry at some point, whether it be owning far to many collectible figurines (toys) or periodical graphic novels (comics). We have a tendency to want to hoard all the cool stuff and things we love. I'm not sure if I have an addictive personality or not, evidence would suggest I don't, but I certainly have a touch of the kleptomaniac about me. It's a terrifying thought actually the amount of "geeky" things I have hoarded over my life.

However, during 2013 I've learned a new word, a powerful word and it's one I wasn't aware existed when it came to buying new toy soldiers... and it's no. It's a simple word, it is really easy to spell and just as easy to say. Yet it can be quite liberating. I'm not really sure when it happened. But at some point this year I looked at the ever increasing pile of miniatures, and said enough is enough. I think the first thing that happened was I got a few Kickstarters sent through to me. Now don't get me wrong, some Ive been very pleased with, but others I've not been so happy about. The quality on some of the things has been utterly shocking. In fact had I seen these products on the sheves of my local hobby shops I would not have brought them. So the first thing that went out of my purchasing window was crowd funding.
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Sunday Sermon: Finding the time

There are, I am reliably informed only 24 hours in the day. Despite the fact that of late it has felt paradoxically like there were too few hours in the day, yet it felt like there were far more than only 24 in a day. It has certainly felt that way at the end of many days recently. I'm not too sure whether that is a full on complaint or indeed just merely an observation. Simply put I've not enough time to ponder on where such thoughts come from nowadays. They pop into my head briefly, and I shrug my shoulders and just get on with whatever it was I was getting on with. Time it seems is a very scant resource round my house at the moment. Which in some ways is an entirely ridiculous state of affairs, but also given the state of daily flux in my routine isn't altogether unsurprising. In short I quite often don't know whether I'm coming or going.

This, as I'm sure you are all aware, is an absolute nightmare for our hobby. I can't just figure out that I might have a spare 3 hours this afternoon, and call up some friends for a game of Infinity or HoMachine. They too have lives, and more annoyingly their own routines. So you need to plan things more than that. Getting to play a wargame requires planning, dates, times and quite often I am unable to give firm answers, it seems, to many of those questions in advance, or more accurately enough in advance to ensure I have an opponent. As such my hobby has suffered horrendously of late. Just picking up a miniature to clean the mould lines and flash off of them has been all I've been able to manage recently. Seriously, I've cleaned five miniatures in 4 weeks. That has to be a new record in tardiness even for me.
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Frontline Gamer fire sale!!!

OK so perhaps 'fire sale' is inaccurate. But yeah, I've got a lot of stuff on my hands that I'm willing to consider selling, because it turns out I'm not going to be able to take everything with me on my move to Scandinavia. If the Swedes and Danes built decent sized homes we wouldn't be having this problem... as they don't I'm looking to shift some stuff on to good homes. That's where you lot come in, and where you might pick up a bit of a bargain. So here's the list of stuff by type:
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Sunday Sermon: Do you know what the definition of insanity is?

If you haven't played Far Cry 3 you really should. Just for Vaas.

Any of you who have played the excellent Far Cry 3 will recognise the question posed in the title to this Sunday Sermon. In Far Cry 3 the rather unhinged and violent bad guy Vaas Montenegro asks the protagonist of this little adventure, Jason Brody, whether he knows what the definition of insanity is. It's actually a rather interesting exchange, and while it doesn't explain why Vaas is as clearly certifiable as he so patently is, it does explain some of his rather 'erratic' decisions. The definition Vaas is referring too is of course that is often thought to have been proposed by Albert Einstein, although it might actually have been coined by American born author Rita Mae Brown:

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results"

Rita Mae Brown, "sudden Death" (Bantam Books, New York, 1983) p.68

Yet still it is contested whether Rita Mae Brown was the individual who is responsible for this oft misquoted soundbite.

Truth is for my purposes today it doesn't really matter who said it first. Or even that it has become a clich� I myself have tired of hearing. Nope, what is important is that actually there is, as is often the case with these things, a grain of truth in them. For the past couple of years Dr Brainiac and myself have driven ourselves mad trying to make ends meet, and eek a living out of doing the same things again, and again. Telling ourselves things would get better. I've applied to countless jobs that quite frankly only a few years ago I was considered far too qualified for, and been knocked back again and again. Each time I've dusted myself off, put on a smile and carried on stoically because that's what us Brits do. It has though been slowly grinding us both down.
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