My Hobby and Blog in December 2015

Happy holidays! It is the end of the year, and it is time to reflect a little bit. With the holidays, the month of December saw a lot less painting. I was able to complete the painting of a cannon with 3 crew members on the last day of 2015. This meant that all the Imperial Army miniatures from Battle Masters is completely painted! This is a collection of miniatures I owned since the 1990's and embarked on painting them in 2010. About time they got finished! Hopefully the Battle Masters Chaos Army would not take that many years before it is completed.

2015 saw my return to painting miniatures. In total, I completed 21 miniatures in a span of approximately 4 months. So if I stay on a similar leisure pace for the entire 2016 year, I should approximately paint 80 figures. That would hardly put a dent into my unpainted figures collection! On that pace and not purchasing any new miniatures from now on, I either will be dead or will not be able to see clearly enough to paint miniatures...

So how do I keep myself motivated enough so that I will have painted the majority of my miniature collection within 10 years rather than in 50-plus years? This blog is part of that answer. The second part of the answer is to make numerous smaller goals that can be reasonably reached. Once those milestones are reached, I should incrementally move the goal post further along. I already have made some lofty goals such as completely painting my growing miniature collection (highly improbable) and painting 15 fantasy-themed armies in 4 phases. The armies project is basically 15 smaller projects with each project having 4 stretch goals to reach. This is more reasonable to accomplished, but collectively is still a very large project altogether.

So for 2016 and beyond what should I make as my specific stretch goals to keep me motivated? Including painting a small batch of miniatures within a certain theme, I want to set stretch goals of total items painted per year. For 2016, I will set the first stretch goal fairly low, 80 items to be completed. Completing this stretch goal would mean that I have not regressed from the pace I painted in 2015. The second stretch goal would be 100 items to be completed, and incrementally add 50 more item per stretch goals. I would be content with 150 items painted completely within 2016; however, that pace will still take decades to completely paint my miniature collection. To completely paint within a 10-year time frame and factoring into collecting more miniatures in the future, I likely have to get into a groove of 500+ items painted on a yearly pace...yeah, I have to just focus on the small goals first! 80 items to be completely painted in 2016 as my first stretch goal!