Guest Article : Paul Wagner's Hobby Motivation

Hello all, my name is Paul Wagner (better known as Pjschard) and I will be writing a few posts while Chuck is off on his exciting British adventures.  I play Age of Sigmar, am part of the Mortal Realms Podcast, and in general am a proud AoS superfan.  When I start thinking of an army I have to find some niche that makes the army cool in my mind.  Whether it be an army list, models, or conversions, I get excited about armies that I can make mine.   If the army fulfills all three motivations I typically go bonkers with my budget to find exactly what will work regardless of how expensive *cough* Forgeworld War Mammoth *cough* or ridiculous *cough* Eleven Arachnaroks *cough* it might be.

The army I am working on at the moment seems to fill none of my checkboxes which leads me to an interesting dilemma.  How do I make an army mine without making it crazy?  Where do I get the motivation to work on something that does not define me?  Why am I taking hobby time to do something that does not further my skills?

I think these questions are at the heart of why we hobby, and I was intrigued by a post that Rhellion made on Twitter.  It was a link to an article that was called “In praise of mediocrity”.  The article is a great read which I also would suggest, and it got me thinking about this latest army.
 
My Nighthaunt force is 2000 points, and I was dreaming up all kinds of ways to make it unique using different bits and different kits to showcase what I thought would make it stand out.  In the end, I’ve decided to just go with a bunch of out of the box kits with but one weapon swap in the whole army.  I realized that I was being held back by the idea that every army has to be my “best work yet.” The other thing I realized was that I had spent so much time trying to make this army better than the last that I had used up most of my painting time without applying paint to model.  My own expectations were my worst enemy.

A funny thing has happened since I sat down and started working.  When I cut out all of the things I “thought” I had to do to make my army personal and unique, I realized that I’m enjoying my hobby just as much.  I love painting models, and it doesn’t need to be my best ever paint job to be fulfilling.  I love converting, but assembling models as intended is still a very enjoyable experience.  I love this hobby, and I don’t have to push myself to enjoy it. Even without of the box stock models, there still remains quite a bit of my personal stamp on the models themselves, and I don’t need to feel guilty that they’re not amazing.  It’s ok to just Hobby.