I added some greenery around Cocoa the Dire Troll today.

Cocoa wants you to click here

I’m not sure when to start counting, but I don’t think I’ve had an actual HOBBY, per se, for 20 years. Every time I picked something up and stuck with it (music, cartooning) I quickly turned it into a vocation, or at least something I aspired to earn a living at. I never succeeded with music, but I pulled it off with cartooning.

So here I am with a hobby-ish pursuit (drawing funny pictures) as my day-job. Can I have a REAL hobby now? PLEASE?

It’s a rhetorical question. The answer is yes. I found one. Painting miniatures. I’ve been spending a few hours (maybe 15) per week on this for the last couple of weeks, but I’m not really COUNTING the hours. I don’t have to. This is something I do for fun, when I’ve gotten enough work done that I can feel good about actually playing.

I can also feel good about the fact that I’m starting to get kind of good at it. I don’t for a moment harbor the illusion that my work will compare favorably with those who do this professionally (and there are numerous professional mini-painters out there — I’ve joined a couple of communities where I can see their work and comment on it), but that doesn’t bother me. This is a HOBBY. The moment it stops being fun, I can decide to stop doing it and there are no sharp edges on that decision.

That’s really the definition of “Hobby,” right? Something you can stop doing when it stops being fun?

Anyway, enough talk. Here’s a mostly-finished miniature.

picture behind the cut

Via celedoine… I kind of like this result.

You are The Magician

Skill, wisdom, adaptation. Craft, cunning, depending on dignity.

Eleoquent and charismatic both verbally and in writing,
you are clever, witty, inventive and persuasive.

The Magician is the male power of creation, creation by willpower and desire. In that ancient sense, it is the ability to make things so just by speaking them aloud. Reflecting this is the fact that the Magician is represented by Mercury. He represents the gift of tongues, a smooth talker, a salesman. Also clever with the slight of hand and a medicine man – either a real doctor or someone trying to sell you snake oil.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

My brother just came up with a great crossover idea between The Terminator, The Matrix, and Battlestar Galactica.

It makes me giggle. Only it would be very, very cool (in a high-level nerd-fu sort of way.)

Link.