Hobby ADHD

A while back some of my Twitter followers asked what my hobby space looked like, as we inevitably all share our mountain of unfinished projects that avalanche into our living space. Here's mine, or as my special lady points out, part of it. It's also spilled over into the kitchen bench behind the desk, the tv cabinet across the room, the shelves in the garage, the bookcase, the wardrobe, oh and my compressor station in the garage. Okay she has a point, and having seen other people's spaces, started me wondering, how do you keep your addiction under control?

Its really tough too, because inevitably you need a break from whatever project your working on, say a Fantasy model, and you decide to change it up by doing 40k for awhile, and pretty quickly it gets out of hand and you've got a mountain of semi-finished projects. Not to mention the new plastic crack that Games Workshop keeps releasing! You bring home the latest "gotta have for my army", tear into the packaging, and pretty soon its joining the assembly line.

I'm trying really hard now to avoid starting anything new. At least if I'm going to jump around, try to restrict the number of projects i've got going so at least some get finished before a replacement moves in. I've also sworn off starting any more armies, although it doesn't help with sweet new models, and hobby buddies that act like your local drug dealer "c'mon start a new army so we can play!".

Incidentally finding time to play is almost impossible - it's hard enough to find time to work on all the projects I have going, but I also hate playing with unpainted models. It's also tough to decide when a model is "done", since I can always find something to improve on as my skills grow. George Lucas once said "Movies are never finished, only abandoned." I think it's the same for miniatures (or anything in life), pick a point that's good enough and let it go - its better to finish something than never finish anything.

I had been thinking about maybe doing some commission painting, not so much for the money, but so I can enjoy painting and then pass along the results, so at least I'm not knee deep in models, and I can paint some of the kits I'd like to do, but am avoiding so my hobby ADHD doesn't get the better of me! Right now I think I have enough to keep me busy though. Maybe one day!

So I'm trying really hard now - I'm making army lists so I don't end up building one of everything, just what I need. I'm setting goals to finish models, and setting goals to hopefully play some games (still working hard on that one). What are you doing to control your hobby addiction?