2022 Year in Review

Year in Review

As with 2021 and 2020, I spent pretty much all year hermiting.

I won’t belabor this too much but: I know gaming’s really picked back up in stores, and conventions are happening, and I think that’s nuts. COVID-19 lethality is thankfully extremely low, but with a 1/5 chance of Long COVID symptoms and a new case rate that’s remained pretty high (it can only look low compared to last year’s Delta wave)… it feels pretty reckless to be pretty reckless about COVID-19.

But – I did game a little: everybody masked in my basement works just fine. I need to actively try to make more of that happen in 2023; it’s really good to socialize and it’s a struggle against inertia to do it.

I’ve been feeling sufficiently isolated that I’ve been considering firing up some online D&D; that says a lot as I spend my days on WebEx/Teams/conference calls professionally and the thought of doing it recreationally is a tough pill to swallow… and yet. Now I just need to determine if I have the energy for it.

In 2022, I was done with Twitter for the same reason everyone else who was done with Twitter was done with Twitter… I’d only gone back to it as a kind of Facebook methadone anyway, so this wasn’t any sort of great loss.

I’ve started up on Mastodon, and I’ve been very pleased with it. It’s a little harder to get into (you need to find the right server and get into it), but it’s got a great vibe there. I’m on warhammer.social, which means I’ve got my feed, I’ve got the local feed for painted minis, and if I need to doomscroll I can check the federated feed. Discourse is much, much less snarky / shitty / screaming, as the fediverse seems to be doing a great job of just flipping the switch on folks who want to make things awful. Recommended.

Finished Projects

  • Aeronautica Imperialis Crimson Fists – I painted these guys up and I’m pretty satisfied with them. They’re not as slapdash as my other AI stuff, either.
  • Genestealer Enforcers – I’m extremely proud of this project. I think they conversions look really good as do the paintjobs.
  • Masters of the Universe Battlegrounds – I haven’t gotten to the expansions yet, but the base game is fully painted and looks really, really good!
  • Fellowship of the Ring – While not the largest possible MESBG army, it was a fun little project that I think looks great.
  • Warcry Battleborn – Yes, it’s basically just two Underworlds Warbands, but they’re great looking warbands.
  • Kill Team Table – Between MOTU:BG and Kill Team, I painted more terrain this year than I have in a while.
  • Stormcast – A third AoS army in three years? What the heck? These guys are probably the best looking (and smallest) of the three.

Hobby Charts

Held pretty steady with last year: 243 models painted. Not quite one a day, which would have been nice.

That December number had everything to do with the longest leave I’ve taken in 18 years of my professional life.

This one is all of the place, and I’m OK with that: I painted what I felt like painting, absent any real push to “be painted” for any particular game.

This ain’t great. I definitely had a shitty ratio for painting vs buying stuff. If I factor in stuff I sold, I end up breaking about even, but I’d like to see less red and more green here.

Goals

2022 Goals:

  • Finish Success – I painted a bunch of stuff, including a pretty big Kill Team project and a third AoS army to completion. High fives all around.
  • Paint Success – No complaints here! I’ve slowed down a bit in what I’ve painted but I’ve also cranked up the quality on it. Early pandemic I was just churning stuff out and that’s less in effect here.
  • Declutter – Partial Success – I think I was technically successful here: I sold off a bunch of Flames of War and Bushido models, which is great ($900 worth of stuff, guys) but fuck, my hobby space is still cluttered as heck.

2023 Goals:

I see folks rattling off specific projects they want to finish in 2023, and that’s not my speed. Nowadays, more so than ever, I want to follow my bliss and paint what I want to paint when I want to paint it. I can see myself planning a month or two out but not much more than that.

  • Finish
  • Paint
  • Declutter – Like I said, my space is still cluttered as heck. My wife’s been watching Hoarders, so I’ve got some good motivation to Just Get Rid Of Stuff. I think in the next month or so I’m just going to start pushing stuff out the door as fast as I can.