Hello everyone,
I hope that everyone is doing ok with this quarantine day, another one to tick off the list I guess.
Today I wanted to talk about one of my geeky nerdy hobbies, in the specific Warhammer 40K (tabletop game from games workshop, an English company that produces and sells miniature and tool for modelling and painting), during this quarantine and how it helped me realising yet again something more about myself.
Long story short, for whom might know this particular sci fi universe, it's all about a version of our galaxy far away in the future (40,000 years in the future to be exact), where the only thing ever present is War. Thousands of souls fight every single day to allow mankind to survive, fighting in the name of the Emperor, a mighty god like being (yet, not a god) that is eternally chained to a golden throne, condemned to forever be a rotting corpse that will never really die (that's a very short description, but online you might find thousands of wiki and lore informations that will discuss at length of the matter).
I have been a small little fanboy of this marvellous and dark grim universe since I was 12 and first discovered the horrors of the far distant future. My favourites were the Tyranids (basically space dinosaurs as I saw them as a kid), aliens that travel around the galaxy with the only goal to consume every single trace of living matter. My first shot a them was not really successful, and as a 12yo in ended up with a pile of ruined plastic ending up in the bin (yeah, I apparently I have always loves wasting money, I guess that it can become on of my many useless talents).
(That's a recently painted one)
We move forwards 9 years, I move to the United Kingdom to improve my English and work as an AuPair for a lovely English-Canadian family (I will likely talk about this another time). Being in the birth place of Warhammer, one day I decided to walk inside one of their shops and, I ended up being fully hocked up, this time being more mature and patience to enjoy and endure all the small bits of the hobby, such a fiddling details, learning how to paint as smoothly as possible, not gluing myself (which is rather challenging, let me tell you).
Since that day, during my year and a half in the hobby, I have spent hounders of pounds in plastic miniatures and paints, mostly because I started playing semi competitively and that made me wanted to be more and more competitive, therefore let's get to update my army rather often, always trying to savage from eBay, Facebook groups because hey, I like wasting money but I am always cheap as I can be lol. I have also made lots of good friends and met a lovely community in my area, almost always ending up at the closest pub drinking until closing time (how far have we moved from the old movies nerd stereotype).
(Those are some of the miniatures in my Ultramarine army)
Now I have moved back to Italy, in my area this hobby is literally unknown to almost anyone, which made me just drop everything, almost regretting all the money and time "wasted".
The quarantine tough, gave me (amongst boredom, lack of activity and possible future drinking problems...) free time. With University being put on hold, my workplace closed until further notice, there is just so much time that I can spend studying, reading and staring at the ceiling.
So, I have finally picked up my brushes again, and slowly started to paint some models again, looking for video to improve my skills and to help me brushing them up after this hiatus.
I have been amazed of how much I have missed taking time for myself, sitting at my desk without a computer and when I raise my head realise that hours have passed and I have barely noticed that.
In the end, I never wasted my time on this particular hobby, I just needed to realise that other things came up in life, it is part of growing, which itself is quite challenging in a restrictive family based culture like that Italian one, but it does not mean that I should just drop everything, close it in a box and make it disappear in my closet of memories and past event.
What I want to say, it that this quarantine helped me realise a little more that some part of our personality cannot be only either on or off like a switch, either we do it or we do not ever again; I should consider it more like a dimmer, that I can adjust according to the situation.
This long time at home helped me realise that I am still 24, not 80. My life will not finish within the year (well, hopefully due to pandemic issues and crossing my fingers lol). I can, and should, let the grip down sometimes, and just dedicate myself to something that is not just studying and work, that I can and should every now and then and dedicated myself to all those little grey areas of myself and my hobbies.
(And this, finally, is my current project :) )
PS: I know for sure that I cannot add photography to my set of skills lol