[Year In Review] An Aptly Chosen Word of the Year

"Brainrot." The OED got that one right.

As is my custom with these annual reviews, I shall part the proverbial kimono and reveal a little of the "arr ell" circumstances that have shaped the state of the hobby system over eleven of the last twelve months. 

(We shan't be talking about December. In December, I have done very little except play Baldur's Gate 3 like it's my job. I blame Garbutt for this. He is the one who bought it for me.)

Anyway. This has been a rotten year. What started as a confident "I'll give myself four weeks off and then start Big School again in January" turned into an "I'll need to take four MONTHS off, including six weeks where I am literally housebound, miss all the readmission deadlines, discover I'm locked out of state funding anyway, and fall into a depressive funk that only clears when literal destitution looms."

This is the longest period of my life that I've spent long-term sick and unemployed and bereft of accomplishments, and I hate it. I hate chronic pain and fatigue and nausea. I am so tired of being so tired all the damn time, and of physically sitting up at my desk to put a single model together wiping me out for the rest of the day, and of needing a day off to recover from an afternoon's wargaming or an evening's roleplaying off the premises. Where are my Star God masters? Where is the body of steel that I was promised?

The year has not, however, been bereft of Good Times. For one thing, I achieved Fully Painted status for a while there, with a whacking 2800 points of Necrons successfully smeared with liquid plastic. Neither did they sit on shelves or in boxes being more of ornament than use! Although I said goodbye to Citizen Roath, we had a banger of a final game to see him off with. The new edition of Kill Team has arrived and proven more to my liking than the last (it helps that I finally won a game against Kraken's wily Kroot). Garbutt and I have played several Crusade games and, while Crusade itself has worn out its welcome with us both, the time we enjoy wasting is not wasted time. My comrade is, indeed, so touched with enthusiasm that he has joined the blog, and now regularly parenthesises our hobby talk with "there could be an article in this."

(I love that he calls them "articles." It's so much more dignified than "posts" and so much more substantial than "content.")

Also, I've been shopping. It seems that, toward the end of each calendar year, I take advantage of whatever bargains are on offer to stock up on hobby projects for the next year. As such, I am presently enriched by one Chronomancer (acquired because Sir James of Workshop gave all his loyal paypigs a £10 stimulus voucher) and one Hypercrypt Legion box set (because the bundle discount, plus independent retailer discount from Loaded Dice in Barry, amounted to "buy these infantry and get a free C'tan", and that's the sort of deal that had me starting this Necron army to begin with).

I also went to Barry to collect the latter, even though I didn't have to and it was two weeks too soon.
I went in November. It was raining. There was only really one response I could make.

The other thing I splurged on was... well. I may have bought the limited edition of The Twice-Dead King and its associated short stories and novella. I may have done this with every intent to flip them on eBay. They are, however, still here, because having read them, they're rather good, and I'm not entirely sure I care to replace them with secondhand paperbacks or e-book ephemera.

If ever there was an image that summed up a year: couchbound, with a good book and a cat's bum to hand.

Although the 'stancies are not ideal, they are better now than they have been for most of the last twelve months. The worst is, I believe, behind me. I am being relatively responsible, and operating within my reduced means. The hobby continues to do what it needs to do for me, which is giving me a star to follow during the worst of the doldrums, and a reason to engage with people outside my own head. I have an army and a team I enjoy playing, and good people with whom to indulge in such activities.

This post has contained a fair amount of pissing and moaning, but please let this and not that be your takeaway.