Second Month Slide

Hail Mars!

Woooo-Hoooo, it's March! Can you tell that I'm excited about the new month? I'm expecting great things for March, which began with a full moon no less, and I really want to make it a strong month for my wargaming hobby. My birthday is less than a week away, then at the end of the month will be my trip to Chicago. Plus I've got all sorts of great times in between with my wonderful wife and daughter so I'm starting this next year of my life happier than I've ever been before. I'm a very fortunate man and I am truly grateful.

Having said all that, I do have some unfortunate news to report. Like so many other people who made resolutions this year, I followed my good first month with a not-so-good second. February was a rough one for keeping resolutions. In the past I always thought that once a resolution was broken, that was it and there was no reason to not regress to whatever that pre-resolution condition might have been. I now have a different understanding, one which I anticipate will not be quite so defeatist and instead perhaps even encouraging. I now see that because these are resolutions to be kept for the whole year, I can still make up for falling behind in my goals. I didn't do as well as I could have this month, but that should not justify throwing out the goals themselves. I just need to do better, and it really is as simple as that. So let's review the resolutions and see how I'm doing.

1. After finishing the Dreadnought in January, the next three weeks passed without painting anything. Once I decided that forcing myself to paint those sniper scouts wasn't worth it, I was able to quickly get back into painting and was having fun again. I don't know how many hours I painted each week this month but I know I easily made up for the initial lack of painting.

2. I've thrown this one out as I no longer want to take my nascent Dark Angels to AdeptiCon. My new goal is to simply have my Chaos Marines ready to go with me should I choose to.

3. I'm not sure about this one as I do not know if my current lack of interest in 40k will persist. With further consideration, this resolution may need revision.

4. This resolution also may need to be altered to better suit my changing tastes in wargaming... seems like an Iron Kingdoms terrain set might be more useful. I'll be thinking about this more over the coming days.

5. I'm not drinking enough water, for which there is no defense.

6. A couple of weeks ago I was given copies of the HORDES Prime rulebook and the WARMACHINE MkII rulebook which will be essential to successfully completing this resolution. Thus far I've mostly just been reading background stuff in these books, though I have recently started reading the rules for Warmachine. By the way, I really like these games.

7. I've been filling out my Circle Orboros collection, adding my first units and solos. With the help of iBodger, I was able to pick out miniatures that would allow me to field a 35 Point army and added to my collection a Gorax light warbeast, 10 Tharn Bloodtrackers (one boxed set and two blisters), 3 Shifting Stones, 6 Circle Druids of Orboros, and a Lord of the Feast. I spent on these miniature $100.93, so I was therefore pretty close to my target, though I also got to help pick out some birthday presents which mitigated somewhat the shopping I might otherwise have done.

8. I did not do well on this one and need to make healthier decisions.

9. I still am yet to play any games this year, although this should be a good month for rolling dice. I'm really hoping I get the chance to play some demonstration games of WARMACHINE and HORDES when I am at AdeptiCon.

10. This is the most important to me and is one which I hope to be improving upon daily.

That's it for the resolution review... I knew February had been a bad month for some of these and I had actually been worried about reporting on them. I probably should revise my hobby goals for the year to make sure that they accurately reflect what I hope to accomplish this year. There is really no sense in forcing myself to play with a particular set of toys just to satisfy an arbitrary goal, especially if it ends up having an effect opposite to the original purpose which was to help me stay motivated. Although I want to honor my resolutions, I see value in modifying them to keep them useful and encouraging rather than obstinately leaving them as they are and just having them go unfulfilled. Something for me to consider, at least.