Months go by and the wheel keeps turning, the yearly cycle coming to an end. I'm not one to celebrate the end of the year much, but this time of the year does always bring me into a contemplative mood. A good time to reflect and think about the plans ahead.
When it comes to hobbies, 2025 has been a good year all around. Collecting, painting, writing, reading, somehow I managed to do it all this year. Well, everything except playing, but I like to tell myself that that one is reserved for next year. Let's break it down.
Painting has suffered a little bit, I managed to paint only 22 miniatures, out of which 14 were Confrontation sculpts, almost half of what I painted in 2024. This was mostly due to two factors. First and foremost, painting challenges. In 2024 I was part of one escalation painting league and one painting competition, which I talked about in this post, the one organized by Sweet. This year I only took part in the challenge organized by Shino, covered in this post, and the current ongoing Crôn-mas Miracle competition. All of this is to say that I think events like these bring out the best of me when it comes to spending time at the painting table. I find those challenges extremely motivating and I always try to go the extra mile, using almost every free minute of the day to hold the brush.
Without challenges and competitions I find it very easy to slip into other hobbies or some other less productive forms of procrastination. One of the positives was that I spent a lot of that time writing here and, to be honest, I enjoyed this journey a lot. And what I liked even more about it was sharing it with the community. End of September with the "Lucky finds..." and October with the "Climbing the Monolith" posts were an extremely motivating time, since those posts generated the most views and feedback from the readers. I hope that I contribute at least a small part to our hobby space and seeing some of my articles getting lots of clicks is humbling and inspirational.
That said, I like that I increased the monthly publishing count in the last quarter of the year and it is definitely something I hope to keep doing in the future. A considerable effort has been put into planning out schedules for posts and pondering about the things I want to write about down the line, so hopefully this space can continue being valuable and entertaining to all of you.
Overall, I think 2025 has been a tremendous year for the blog, definitely surpassing my own expectations and hitting some important milestones. I think it provided me with much needed focus and space to clear my mind and to realize which hobbies are important to me. I've mentioned before, I'm all over the place and have many things I collect and ruminate over, but this blog and the community made me understand just how important Aarklash is to me, how deep I want to delve into it further, and how I only barely scratched the surface. It will definitely put a lot of other hobbies into the back seat and some I might drop entirely for the sake of Rackham's worlds.
Speaking of other hobbies, another factor which contributed to painting less is time spent writing elsewhere and just being away from home a lot. I've been traveling back to Serbia quite often this year and every time that I do I run an RPG campaign back in my hometown which takes a lot of preparation, which is enjoyable nonetheless! I have another blog where I sometimes post about RPGs which is currently on an extended break, but I hope to lively up that place soon-ish, at least in order to mention the campaign I'm running, so I'll definitely advertise it here for all those interested once that happens.
All of this is to say that I need more structure to organize my painting time when competitions, challenges, or leagues are not happening. My Confrontation collection keeps growing rapidly and I dislike seeing it just sit there, regardless of calling it a pile of "shame" or "potential". The collection has easily quadrupled since the blog started and I don't think the purchasing sprees are gonna slow down any time soon, so the brush truly needs to see more use.
So, what are my goals moving forward and for 2026 specifically?
- Try to achieve, or hopefully surpass, my painted miniature count of 2024 - this means have at least 40 miniatures painted by the end of 2026, with at least half being miniatures released by Rackham;
- Figure out a good painting regiment in order to achieve this - aka stay motivated to paint even when no "events" are being held;
- Keep my focus on Rackham - reorganize all my other hobbies and stay focused on Rackham games primarily;
- Get some games going - my aim is to get Hybrid on the table first and make that a semi-regular activity, then slowly transition over to Confrontation;
- Write, write, write - ideally, I would love to keep posting here once every week, or once every other week, if I could keep up that pace for the entire year I will be quite happy;
I have a lot of other plans and wishes for the time ahead, but I want to keep these goals strict and achievable. All the signs point to 2026 being another great year and I'm looking forward to sharing that journey with you all. A huge thank you to everyone reading the blog and taking any kind of interest in my thoughts on here, the support and attention means the world. Hope you all had a great year and that the time ahead of us will treat you even better. See you soon!
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