I have for the last few years tried to do a bit of reflection on the preceding year and think about what I want to do in the following year. It started, I think primarily when I became a dad, because as you might imagine, my time (not to mention my disposable income) has become somewhat limited.
Usually I’d focussed on hobby related goals, what armies or games I was looking to pay most attention to. With greater or lesser success depending on how bad the hobby magpie got his claws in.
Full disclosure here, this will be a ranty piece. My intention is not to preach or judge. To be fully transparent, I’m what some newspapers would describe as a ‘Tofu-eating Wokarati’. In that, I want my son to live in a world that isn’t on fire and believe everyone should live in at least a base level of comfort. I eat a plant based diet, my family drive an electric car and on the whole my philosophy is pretty much ‘Do what you want as long as it isn’t hurting anyone else’.
As with most new year’s resolutions there is a certain amount of personal bettering, exercise more, drink less etc. I mentioned I’d like to write more on my first post here (and, look I’m still trying!), I want to get back into drawing again, generally live a little more sustainably and shed some of my ‘stuff’ — either by giving it away or selling it. This hopefully will give me the space, both physically and mentally to focus on what I care about most. Historically I’ve gone all in on new projects which inevitably stall and leave me with heaps of models that remain unused still.
Buy less, especially from mega corporations
It feels like in recent years there has been a bit of an explosion of indie RPG, gaming and minis and I’m all for it. I’ve ploughed god knows how much cash into Games Workshop over the years, and this year my intention is to keep that hopefully zero. I would make exception for maybe another Heresy edition, or if they did something like a Space Hulk reprint – maybe a limited edition book (the illustrated & annotated) Hereticus for instance.
But even outside of gaming, I’m trying to buy less, I probably don’t need whatever it is. When I do, I try to support smaller, local companies. I like Cyberpunk as a genre, but it isn’t supposed to be aspirational.
I’m trying not to buy from Amazon so much (but man it is hard!), I’m trying to move away from Google as my search engine of choice, as well as the host of my business emails for this reason, plus the continuing pushing of AI.
This last year, I’ve cancelled all my streaming services, with the exception of Amazon Prime (…so far!). My intention is to just pay for them when there is specifically something I really want to watch. They’re essentially becoming the industry they tried to disrupt but worse, and so I’m making a conscious effort to prefer physical media that I own. I resent the move to a subscription model for everything and have made the switch away from it where I can, such as with Adobe products in favour of Affinity.
Spotify is in my sights. I’ve used it for years now, my son and wife use it too, we’ve got a bunch of playlists saved and it’s just so easy to revert to them. But they pay the artists shit money, and the CEO is funding AI weapons tech. No thank you. There are better, fairer options like Bandcamp, or maybe some self hosted NAS or whatever.
In short; capitalism is fucking everything up and with my limited time and resources I’m intending to make more sustainable, but importantly, ethical choices.
Social media is shit; AI is bad yo, and I don’t want it.
First, let me be clear. Some AI is good. AI can spot cancer on scans, it can predict risk, there are lots of useful things it can do. I even work for a company that uses it to some extent, for in my opinion a net good. So when I say ‘AI is bad’ I mean specifically the recent social media, chat assistant, sloppy shit companies seem to be forcing into everything even though everyone hates it. There are lots of reasons, but fundamentally they’re built on stolen work, use an ungodly amount of energy and water for some mediocre, soulless output.
I’ve already deleted my twitter because is was a binfire, but ultimately Musk was what finished it for me. As I write this, there is talk of Meta killing off the fact checking aspect because it is ‘too politically bias’, so next on the chopping block is probably Facebook so I’ve just deactivated my Facebook account. I’m not using it for anything other than messenger, and occasionally marketplace. I think this might be the final straw, but I do use Messenger to talk to a bunch of my friends and family, which really is the only hurdle I need to overcome before I delete it all together.
Instagram is really the platform I’ve enjoyed the most, especially for hobby. But the algorithm continues to degrade and I’m just not seeing the stuff I want to — so now with these added ethical considerations, it is becoming harder to justify it. If you want to read more about how everything is getting bad (capitalism did it) you can read more about it, written in a much more eloquent way by Ed Zitron. For now, this is my primary view into the hobby, and I get a lot of inspiration from it, so I shall keep it, but with a mind to decreasing my usage of it.
Hobby stuff for 2025
Anyway… what are my hobby goals for 2025? I want to focus on these key bits:
- Finish my Mordheim Possessed warband, The Children of the Saviour Worm
- Continue my push for at least one force per system, by finishing one of my 40k forces.
- This will either be some 2nd/3rd edition inspired blood angels using some retro scouts that should be delivered from a delayed kickstarter or just as likely my Forge World Chaos Militia boosted by Wargame Atlantic’s Damned when they are delivered. Or perhaps Mechanicus.
- A Kill Team sized force of my Storm Blades chapter of marines. Mostly a narrative exercise, but it would be nice if I could run them as a Kill Team should I ever pick it up.
- Some I28 Imperial Ecclesiarchy penitent nut jobs which can pull double duty as a Cawdor gang in Necromunda, known as The Fraternity of Salt.
- Some heavy cyberpunk inspired Spyrers combined with a healthy measure of heraldry and noble pomp and a dash of dazzle camo.
- Trench Crusade! I backed the kickstarter and am keen to get the minis printed and painted.
- Finally I’d like to start picking up Inq28th again, and producing a model for it a month — perhaps not every month, but some!
- Specifically for this, I’d like to explore Tenenbaum my radical Inquisitor again but older. What has happened to his associates? Who made it, at what cost? Who did we lose?
- Some of the crazy church guys mentioned above.