Backlog and the Unending Quest

I. The Box Before It Vanishes

The week has been highlighted by the Sunday Preview, and then the wait sets in knowing that the new kit will be available. Limited numbers. Small allocations for the discounted price. Rumors that the box has been underproduced.

Then, release day. The countdown to midday. Credit card saved. Account logged in. Standing by the computer, refreshing the page, waiting for the pre-order button to become available. It may be plastic, cardboard, instructions, transfers, and rules that will be outdated within a month or two, but for that moment it feels like the only important thing.

I am not altogether sure this is bad. The release is exciting, and it is nice to be excited. For those of us who spend a lot of time working, fixing small problems, working on recurring tasks, paying bills, answering emails, or making dinner, a box of small plastic warriors can carry more hope than it probably should. If I can get the preorder, then I can find time later on. Time to build. Time to paint. Time to sit under the desk lamp and rethink paint schemes. This hope leads to the purchase and enjoying the excitement of adding to the collection.

Our hobby works on imagination and a lot of FOMO. The new kit drops in previews, and I see how it can belong in an army, or how it can begin a new one. I imagine the new paint scheme, and can see when I would fit it into my painting schedule. The picture in my mind of the painted mini, before it is available for preorder.

Then the box arrives.

For a day or two it has a kind of glow to it. I place it where it can be seen, run a small knife through the shrink-wrap, and take a first look at the sprues. But life continues on: work runs late or the kids need to be taken somewhere. The desk is covered with my previous project, which was also going to be finished properly. And slowly the new purchase gets covered in dust.

No one is ever harmed by a box of miniatures sitting unbuilt. And yet, the object that once carried excitement begins to carry a sense of accusation. I look at the box and wonder when I’ll ever get to fit it in. Wonder if it will ever join the army. So, I put it aside: out of sight, out of mind.

But the never-ending content of the internet only makes it call from the hidden spaces. I watch the latest “box in 24 hour” challenge, and the hidden plastic beats like Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart^[1]. Build a Patrol in a weekend, or “clear the back log in a month” videos offer challenges that are fun to watch, and yet create friction when getting started.

I know the challenges can help. Our Buried Under Plastic^[2] has been helpful with moving through Combat Patrols and army builds. A deadline makes the first cut seem less deep. An agreement with a friend or family member can turn the lonely desk into an inspired one.

There were backlogs before the internet, of course. Modellers have always bought more than they could finish. But the release window has narrowed the feeling. We barely have time to enjoy the new model before the next one joins the collection. Chadwick Model Railway^[3] talked about a term SABLE^[4] - Stuff Acquired Before Life Expectancy - a sober reminder that we can spend more than we get to complete.

So has the hobby turned into a pressure cooker? We hate missing out on an important box set. Then we cannot get it finished before the next release. FOMO at the front door, shame at the desk.

II. The Backlog as Quest Log

What happens if our modelling and painting is more like a quest than we would like to admit? If we are honest, there are projects that hang around for far too long. Sometimes inspiration takes us away from our current plan. Maybe, the new kit gets placed onto a shelf, as expectation melts into a fear of getting started. Half-built squads in takeaway containers. A character model with one arm missing. Sprues returned to the box after a first evening of enthusiasm. A tank waiting for weathering. A gang waiting for names. A unit that was meant to be the beginning of an army, and became the only model of it that exists.

We have a way to hide our intentions behind a convincing wall of explanations. A model can wait for years and still become something. I have had projects return after long silences. A colour scheme makes sense. A new rule gives an old unit a reason to live. A piece of lore catches somewhere in the mind and sends me back to a box I had stopped seeing.

A model can wait for years and still become something. I have had projects return after long silences: a colour scheme suddenly makes sense, a new rule gives an old unit a reason to live, a piece of lore that pulls me back to the faction. The backlog is not dead stock, just waiting for a glimpse of light.

The hobby backlog does something similar. It tells us what kind of hobbyist we once intended to be. Here is the army we were going to build slowly and properly. Here is the skirmish gang that would be quick, because ten models is hardly anything. Here is the limited box that felt too good to miss. Here is the rescue project from eBay. Here is the conversion idea that depended on one part from a kit we did not otherwise need.

The quest log grows.

Main quests. Side quests. Seasonal events. Timed rewards. A model bought for one army that now belongs to another. A box bought for a campaign that never started. A unit assembled for an edition that has already moved on.

A backlog becomes a heavy weight because it is made from optimism that has aged. Each box remembers a moment when the future seemed more spacious. We thought there would be time after work. We thought the school holidays might open a few evenings. We thought the new desk setup would change the rhythm. We thought a challenge would get us moving. We thought this army would be different because this time there was a plan, and the plan had colours, and the colours had names.

I keep thinking about the models that survive long enough to become invisible. At first they are exciting. Then they are put aside. Then they are part of the furniture. They sit behind other boxes, under newer kits. One day we move something and find them again. There is usually a moment of recognition. Oh yes. This. I was going to do something with this.

Those models we put aside carry the uncomfortable truth that desire is cheap at the moment of purchase and expensive at the moment of attention. Buying the box takes a minute. Building it takes an evening. Painting it properly can take weeks. The transaction is fast, but the fulfilment is slow. The internet is very good at the first part. The desk is where the second part looms, often with a mocking voice.

So the backlog sits between imagination and labour. It is not only the evidence of overbuying, though it can be that. It is not only a sign of failure, though it can feel that way on a tired night. It is a pile of futures we once believed we would have time to enter. Some of those futures may still be waiting for us. Some may belong to people we are no longer becoming.

III. The Challenge as Voluntary Obstacle

Bringing in a challenge can change how we approach hobby time. It doesn’t have to be a massive challenge, just something small is enough to get started: One model by Sunday; Finish a squad by the end of the month; or a new gang for the next game night. Possibly it is written in a notebook, or posted in a group chat. Any way to make it known just gives the next project a boundary, and in doing so creates a game.

“To play a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” ^[5]

Bernard Suits explains why playing a game can work for us. A game is not just about a win or a loss. It is not the board, the ball, the people or the cards. A game is an agreement to make a simple thing harder. A ball through a ring with five defenders. To move a knight in a crooked little path instead of sliding it in a straight line. Painting a model in a weekend when no one requires the model to be painted by Monday.

A challenge adds another layer of chosen difficulty to a thing that was already unnecessary. None of this makes the hobby more efficient. It does the opposite. It gives the work a frame, and the frame gives the hand somewhere to begin.

This is why challenges can be a useful tool to find forward momentum. They narrow the world when the backlog is too large to think about. But a challenge can take one object from the shelf and place it in front of us. Not the whole army. Not the whole year. Just this model. This unit. This evening. The challenge says the road does not have to be understood all the way to the horizon. It only has to be walked to the next bend.

The voluntary part is easy to lose sight of. Suits’s sentence does not say that play is the attempt to overcome obstacles imposed by shame, marketing, comparison, or a low-grade fear of being left behind. It says voluntary. The obstacle has to be accepted in some real sense, not merely inherited from the noise around us.

And maybe that is the best version of it? Not the challenge as proof, but the challenge as permission. Permission to start without painting all the backlog. Permission to make an arbitrary rule and enjoy the process.

One model. One rule. One small limit that makes the grey disappear.

IV. When Play Becomes Proof

I often reflect on the things that keep me at the table, and some of them are good. The yearly challenge we are doing has pulled me to the modeling desk frequently, and I am on track to complete the most models I have ever done. However, I do get stuck on why I have to keep taking photos or filming things.

A voluntary obstacle does not always stay voluntary. A model is not just something completed; it is evidence that I was there and that I had not fallen behind in the challenge.

“Excess work and performance escalate into auto-exploitation. This is more efficient than allo-exploitation, for the feeling of freedom attends it. The exploiter is simultaneously the exploited.” ^[6]

A challenge encourages us to return to the modelling desk, but it also holds our nose to the grindstone. It is not to say that working at the desk is the same as in an office or in a warehouse, but the challenge force us into a situation the outcome becomes important. Afterall, who is making us hurry?

Often, no one.

No manager stands beside the shelf. No one docks our pay because the infantry are still grey. The challenge invites us because it sounds like an opportunity, and maybe that is why it works so well.

“The society of laboring and achievement is not a free society. It generates new constraints… One exploits oneself. It means that exploitation is possible even without domination.” ^[7]

As hobbyists we are free to buy the latest box, free to leave it sealed, or free to ignore the challenge with friends. And it not that the challenge culture we are in is false or that the youtube videos are worthless. There are often good tips, or a good encouragement to get started. But the camera does change the work it watches. The requirement of adding a thumbnail changes what we mean by “completed”.

Our hobby desk becomes a stage. Mistakes are part of the story if it fits the video's narrative. The finished model is not the end; it is the beginning of content. While we get to hobby on a regular basis, it changes the way we work, and the mode of delivery. It means we are thinking of the camera framing more than we did in the past.

A private hour alone, behind the desk with no photo, no post to the group chat, no making sure the lighting is correct, could have been the most reflective part of the hobby for the week. But it is not presented, and if it wasn’t accounted for as part of the challenge did it really count?

It creates another voice that adds a chorus of words about our hobby. Another feeling inside to deal with, alongside our pile of shame^[8] talk. Another voice instructing us to return to our hobby, we become both worker and manager, setting the task, missing the task, reviewing the failed task, and drafting a new plan to recover the lost time.

The trouble is not that challenges exist. The trouble is that they can make us feel bad about not getting things done as fast. They can make slow work feel indulgent, private work feel incomplete, and unfinished work feel like a defeat even when no one else knows it exists.

V. The Challenge That Returns Us to the Desk

Sometimes I find it enough to get behind the desk and add something to a model, not much, but something. A stroke of highlight, or a completed base coat. A small amount of time can feel like taking a step toward finishing. A model does not need much from us in any practical sense; it can lie inert in the warp for 10 years while the world continues on... then we start little steps to getting it done.

The question, I think, is whether the challenge brings us back to the hobby or replaces it with a scoreboard. Done the right way, a challenge can break the fog of choice. It lets us focus on the one figure beneath the lamp. And that can make the backlog feel a little smaller without looking at everything that waits for us.

If a challenge makes our hobby feel like a scorecard, then we become the manager of our own leisure. We set the target, miss the target, explain the miss, reset the target, and hope we can find that target again. Some nights this works. Some nights it is just admin with a sable brush.

The backlog will probably remain. There will be another box, another preview, another plan before it gets railroaded by other plans. Some nights the challenge will help. Some nights it will become a dark voice in the room. The difference may be small, but we usually know. We know whether we return to enjoy our hobby, or if we are reporting for duty.