Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Birthday time

And i even missed it.

Again its been a long time between posts. A combination of busy at work, a bit of 1:1 scale modeling on an older wooden home (and to think we seriously looked at a 100 year old house) and a general pause in modeling.

So, where am I up to?
Mostly its trying to find a bit of enthusiasm to get on with the wharf. I've come up with a way to actuate the points, but have a bit of a mental block to start with the piles. This is going to be a monumental task to do, and it will be a challenge to get it right. The paper ship I'm using also has a few issues that I will have to fix at some point.

The major problem I have is one of perfectionist block (I think that's what its called). I can have a vision of what I want to achieve, but lacking the skills (or confidence in those skills) to get to that vision means that it doesn't get past the starting post. Or that the order of the steps is crucial, and a lack of confidence in a future step can scuttle the current one.. I guess it might be a hangover from my current professional career. This involves every step being planned in advance, and nothing happens until every step to the final one is visualised. OK its not quite like this, but in chemistry if things go wrong, they can go wrong very fast and people get hurt (or at least have to fill in lots of paperwork discussing what went wrong)

In some ways working on the house has been good for this. I've now learnt to push a small project through till its either finished, or won't leak during winter. I can leave it there and go and do something else. I've also been dabling in another prototype/scale which allows me to build without worrying about whether its prototypical or not (since I'm making it up). Its also nice to be "mostly" working with RTR models for a change.

Hopefully this translates back to NZ120 in the not too distant future.

3 comments:

Lewis Holden said...

I know what you mean by professionalist block. It's difficult to get over and demotivating. But I keep trying, I find taking things slowly and doing things one bit at a time gets a much better result than trying to rush things as I used to...

woodsworks said...

Yep, suffer from it all the time too, along with a fear of chopping up stuff in case I stuff things up and waste a whole lot of money, especially if what I'm chopping is a long-out-of-production model. That's probably why I enjoy building big bridges - since I make the timber, there's no fear of running short! It is only in recent times that I am overcoming such issues as I learn new skills and find that it no longer matters if I ruin something because I now have the means to build a respectable replacement myself.

0-4-4-0T said...

Ditto. I will often put a model or project aside for a while if I can't figure out a construction method or assembly sequence that will work. Sometimes it's days, other times it's years before I crack the problem. If a model has gone well to a certain stage, I'm more and more cautious with each step so as not to ruin the work so far.