Blog

The Combat Workshop‘s “Sprue Cutters Union” is akin to a group build, only with blog posts instead of builds. 

This week’s topic:

How do you find time for the hobby?

For me, it’s not a matter of finding time. Time isn’t exactly lying around the house to be found. Hell, if I had to find time to get out to the bench, I’d never get out to the bench.

Instead, I make time. Or steal it. Or hold it hostage. Pick your metaphor.

Here’s the deal. I’ve got a full-time job that has a bad habit of bleeding into weekends and holidays. And three small kids. And a wife. And four dogs. On any given day, from the moment I wake up, I’m staring down a 15-hour stretch of responsibility. Work or watching the kids or feeding the dogs or running errands. The only times I can really think about hitting the bench while the sun is up are those rare weekends when Mrs. Doogs takes the kids to see her parents.

Most of the time, though, my bench time comes with the end of the day, once the kids are in bed, their lunches for the next day made, and the dogs put in their kennels for the night.

Like vampires, the rebels from the Terminator movies and the aliens from Aliens, I mostly come out at night. Mostly.

Typically, I’ll get a start around 10PM and go until around 1AM or so. Yes, it costs me a bit of sleep. But I’m a night owl by nature (if nearly six years of fatherhood haven’t beaten that out of me, nothing will!), and I find if I skip the bench for a few more hours of shuteye, I wake up more tired and grumpy than if I’d stayed up. The way I interpret that is that modeling is my decompression time. It helps me spin down so when I do go to sleep,  I sleep soundly, if not for the recommended eight hours.