One year on - walking the dog

It’s exactly a year since I started this blog.  I thought I’d do a little reminiscing on the 1st birthday.  

When I started I didn’t have any vision or aspirations other than using it as a hobby diary.  It was a place to document my hobby activity and air my hobby ramblings.  I’ve stuck to that, only posting when I’ve completed a piece of work and there's only been an occasional rambling, thankfully any readers would say.  And I’m pleased to say there has been some readers.  OK I can’t tell if anyone has actually read anything, but at least they’ve looked and there’s been well over 12,500 visits which isn’t too bad. 

I’m fully aware that most of my interests are “talk about niche" as someone on TMP pointed out.  Niche within a niche hobby - I’m happy with that.  My hobby world doesn’t currently include the perennial favourites of Napoleonics, American Civil War, anything Games Workshop related or the Normandy campaign of WW2.  And there's not much in 28mm with the majority of my 28mm projects done years prior to the blog starting.  But wargaming is such a broad church people still look at the blog and that’s what is good.  There’s room for everyone out there.  

I don’t do a lot of publicising of the blog apart from putting a weekly notice on TMP.  This has generated traffic but what is more interesting is the comments.  Nearly all have been very encouraging and it's pleasing there are people out there that have enjoyed what I’ve done.  A few people leave comments on the blog itself which is even better as I have a record of these to refer to. 

I introduced the weekly summary this year and that’s helped to organise my thoughts and provide even more of a diary element.  I’m now trying to be very strict and have the summary complete and a TMP news item posted by 1700 on a Friday.  The posts are done as and when I can.  And that brings me onto a very important point about the blog which struck me this week.

A blog is like a dog.  A dog has to be walked.  And that makes you get off your arse in all weathers and perhaps when you don’t really want to, but ultimately you have to and it’s good for you.  And by disciplining myself to committing to updating my blog, I commit to the hobby and that makes me do stuff even in difficult times.  Like now.

I’ve had a bad few weeks with a member of my immediate family being very ill and hospitalised.  To top it all events at work have been beyond demotivating.  At the start of this week things came to a head with both and the thought of doing anything hobby related was far from my mind. 

But then I started to think about writing this piece and what to put in the weekly update.  That made me get out of the chair and at least tidy my painting table.  And before I knew it, I was cleaning up some figures and then painting them.  That has been helpful in itself.  Because although it's inconsequential in the greater scheme of things, at least I am in control of that.  Perhaps that's actually the greatest gift of this fine hobby?  Alles in Ordnung.