Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Oh heh.

Funny thing is, for a while I got a job teaching English in China. Poor students. The main qualification required was the skin colour.

Zany Chinese communists. Someone should make a cartoon series about their shenannigans

The whole "no life thing" gets to me , not that have had it said to me personally. Its just well how is having an interest such a bad thing , what would you rather want me to do though ? .Its as though people cant have lives other than get married ,kids, work , watch t.v . I mean as long as its not obsessive then a hobby is good for you.

LEEQAEX wrote:The whole "no life thing" gets to me , not that have had it said to me personally. Its just well how is having an interest such a bad thing , what would you rather want me to do though ? .Its as though people cant have lives other than get married ,kids, work , watch t.v . I mean as long as its not obsessive then a hobby is good for you.

Indeed. Just think about the so-called "lives" of your peers. Going out on a Friday night and throwing £20-£40 down the drain to enable you to spend most of Saturday in bed with a splitting headache. I tried this "life" in my twenties and yes, there were girls to be had on the odd occassion, but more often than not, this just led to hassles the following weekend. I met my wife because my flatmate's girlfriend saw me watching Firefly one night, mentioned that one of her friends liked the show and later decided to set us up. Or to put it another way, I met my wife as a direct consequence of staying in on a Friday night watching sci fi on the box

:O Firefly is AWESOME! And that is an epic way to meet your wife, you win ludicrous amounts of Nerd points for that =D

I found the best way to way to make them not feel you're living an intrinsic life is this: instead of watching all of Star Wars in a day by yourself, invite your significant other to watch it with you. =D some would say that's a wasted day, I say it's a day well spent. Who wants to achieve some pointless task, when you can watch 6 films in a day with the person you love?

Oshova

Corennus wrote:Need advice.
At what point does one have to sit back and start painting less, reading less and basically pulling back from the hobby?
Basically found i'm doing it so much that family is worried i'm obsessed with it, and i'm worried too.

How often do people paint or do models? how often is healthy?

That is the operative phrase here.

Hobby- Freetime relaxing activities.

If it is anything more then that, go take your old lady out for a night on the town and have a heart to heart with her about it. The fact that you realize that it is getting out of hand means that you are ok. Just take a step back, clean up all of your projects and put a few of them awy for awhile, and just work on one at a time, until you finish it.

If you are getting stupid with it, your probebly just wasting time, anyway. Take a step back and refocus your energy on one project at a time, get your priorities back in order, and or just take a break and go do something else.

Otherwise, send your old lady my way, you go have fun painting, and I'll send her back when I'm done with her.

Win-Win situation, all around.

As with anything in life, moderation is important. The thing that leads me to believe perhaps you are doing it a bit too much is that you yourself are not sure if they are right or not.

Why not allocate a certain amount of time a week to spend time with your friends or family, and leave the rest open to doing whatever you want, and if its hobbying, go nuts. Just don't neglect the people you care about or your responsibilities

Good luck!

I always find it interested when meeting a new lady as to "when" to bring up the fact that I play with toy soldiers.

I never found it an effective pick up line, "Hi, I'm Craig, want to come back to my place and play with my little men?"

Hence, if I was expecting company, I would generally put away all the evidence.

Then I would use the 25 point rule. For example;

1 Point - taking her out to dinner
2 Points - buying flowers
3 Points - ummm, errrr, a "happy ending" (for her)
Once you have hit 25, get the boys out of the closet!

However, this needs to be maintained. For example, if you go for an all night gaming session then you lose 1 point. Requiring further points to be gained.

This seemed to keep then happy enough. Problem is after about 2-3 years I seem to start to take them for granted, and get too many -1's. Once you get back to 0, its probably back to the single market. But thats a different story.

Well just got through a painting free weekend and I have to say it was very nice.

Also not painting gives you more time to relax. think about what you're doing. come up with new paint schemes if necessary.

cmac wrote:I always find it interested when meeting a new lady as to "when" to bring up the fact that I play with toy soldiers.

I never found it an effective pick up line, "Hi, I'm Craig, want to come back to my place and play with my little men?"

Hence, if I was expecting company, I would generally put away all the evidence.

Then I would use the 25 point rule. For example;

1 Point - taking her out to dinner
2 Points - buying flowers
3 Points - ummm, errrr, a "happy ending" (for her)
Once you have hit 25, get the boys out of the closet!

However, this needs to be maintained. For example, if you go for an all night gaming session then you lose 1 point. Requiring further points to be gained.

This seemed to keep then happy enough. Problem is after about 2-3 years I seem to start to take them for granted, and get too many -1's. Once you get back to 0, its probably back to the single market. But thats a different story.

lol my wife got exposed 3 years into our relationship, I had accrued many more than 25 pts by then. Wasn't hiding it per se, was actually just on a long hiatus from the hobby. Previous to that most of my other girlfriends who were exposed to it didnt react too badly either. I just paint and don't actually play so I think it is a bit easier to swallow for them because of that, I'm not in the basement for 5 hours screaming DAKKADAKKADAKKA intermitently lol.

That being said, she was a bit shocked as I don't 'look or act the type' according to her lol, I guess I'm more of a closet nerd (but still proud!) - my retort to her was - you have a masters in biological chemistry, nothing I ever paint, watch or buy will ever make me a bigger nerd than you. Remember that.

Well put

I typically leave my crap out for anyone to see. Same thing with my miniatures.

People will either show interest in the hooby or they won't. I'm usually quite drunk in either circumstance, so I don't care either way "You painted all these!?" is the general response when a member of the 'unenlightened' sees the stuff, followed by an "I could never do that" - Which seems to be everyone's mindset until they try.

If folks think it's stupid, or that I'm a lonely man for playing with plastic figures (Well, more painting than playing these days ) I point out the old lady's stuff and the many piles belonging to my buddies, and they tend to switch to feeling like the odd man out.

On that note, I don't lose any points for gaming or painting nights, because her and the guys are usually there with me

You don't want to know how much time I spend painting a week...

Ah but to go to gaming nights from where I am involves an HOUR's drive.

From the sounds of it, your families view of your hobby seems to be generated by a lack of understanding of it. I am very lucky that even though my Family, Girlfriend and most of my Friends are not interested in the hobby they understand it (to varrying degrees) and are for the most part supportive of it.

I tend to spend a few hours on weekday nights painting, get the odd game in on weekends and probably go into a GW store once every couple of weeks. I dont find this excessive, it leaves plenty of time for everyone and everything else in my life.

If you feel like you are spending a bit too much time on the hobby then maybe cut back your painting time to just a couple of hours each evening and a few on weekends.

Even though the hobby can be time consuming and expensive there are few like it which offer the same rewards. The collecting nature of it not only means that you ave something physical to shoew for your efforts, but aslo assets which you can sell off should you loose interest or want to fund a different project. Not only is the gaming side of the hobby social, it encourages maths skills, logical thinking and forward planning. The painting/converting improves your attention to detail, dexterity and creativness.
These are all things which drinking until you swamp your pants (something I have been known to do in the past) can't offer.

The argument that collecting toy soldiers is for people who dont have a life, girlfriend, or decent job is utter nonsense.

Age: 28 years old. So not a child. Check
Background: Served in the Army and run my own pub. So not a waster. Check
Current Occupation: Engineer earning above national average. So decent job. Check
Home owner: Have a mortgage on a three bedroom house. So not living in my mums basement. Check
Marital Status: Engaged to be married next year. So I have a real, live girlfriend who exists outside the confines of the internet. Check.
Other interests: Horse racing (girlfreinds dad breeds them), Going for curry and beer with my friends, Traveling, have been all over Europe going to Africa this year then NewZeland and Indoniesia booked for next year, you get the idea I have a life. Check.

Your life is you own, as are your hobbies and interests, as long as they are legal and dont mess up your health then your family and friends can either support you or leave you alone to enjoy them. What they shouldn't do is try to stop you because they dont understand them or don't find them appealing themselves.

squilverine wrote:Background: Served in the Army and run my own pub. So not a waster. Check
Current Occupation: Engineer earning above national average. So decent job. Check

Traveling, have been all over Europe going to Africa this year then NewZeland and Indoniesia booked for next year, you get the idea I have a life. Check.

Engineer running a pub? Heh, ok. You either run 2 jobs, just get the bar manager to do the work or you don't like engineering? Otherwise it seems a strange choice.

New Zealand (its got an "a" in it) but hey, I was just born there. Avoid Christchurch, go straight to Queenstown or the West Coast/Nelson etc. Christchurch is a dive for tourism. 1 night max.

Btw: No disrespect intended if you read this and find some

Yes, What i'm doing is painting at lunchtimes on weekdays and trying to leave weekends as free as possible.

That way I'm getting my army done (converting hand weapons is a bitch!) and still not overdoing it.

And I will be going back to GW in the coming months.

cmac wrote:

squilverine wrote:Background: Served in the Army and run my own pub. So not a waster. Check
Current Occupation: Engineer earning above national average. So decent job. Check

Traveling, have been all over Europe going to Africa this year then NewZeland and Indoniesia booked for next year, you get the idea I have a life. Check.

Engineer running a pub? Heh, ok. You either run 2 jobs, just get the bar manager to do the work or you don't like engineering? Otherwise it seems a strange choice.

New Zealand (its got an "a" in it) but hey, I was just born there. Avoid Christchurch, go straight to Queenstown or the West Coast/Nelson etc. Christchurch is a dive for tourism. 1 night max.

Btw: No disrespect intended if you read this and find some

None taken mate, it should have read as "and ran a pub" After leaving school I didn't really do a lot for a couple of years so joined the Army, after leaving I went into running pubs (a family business) I gave up on running my last pub a few years back after I met my current girlfriend and got fed up with breaking up bar fights (running a city centre pub is nothing but long hours and aggravation).

Cheers for the advice on Christchurch, I have some family in a place called Mission Bay, so am planning on dropping in to see them and get some local knowledge on wheres good to go.

I actually had to google mission bay (shame). Looks like an Auckland thing. Wouldn't spend too much time there if I was you, it's just another big city. Further north is quite nice, especially if you like fishing/diving. Ask about the Poor Nights.

Abel Tasman would be worth some time, depending on what time of year you go would determine the "best places".

With any travel, I would recommend getting a ticket in and a ticket out. Everything else can be done by domestic transportation. Your locals will sort you out (careful of the Aucklanders).

I did a similar thing with bar ownership (actually really easy to do if you have a customer base and a location with full fitout), after buying the stock at 1NZD an RTD and deciding to sell at 2.50NZD without any mgmt accounting done (including variable costs into the selling price etc ) I decided to go study cost acct at Uni which led to auditing. Funny how things work.

Enjoy the country! (Grass is always greener)