My instinctive response, though I don't know if I would have the courage to voice it in a job audition, would be something along the lines of, "I guess this is similar to that question about 'how does a Pygmy go about eating an elephant?', and the answer at its simplest is, 'one bite at a time'. If I have to move Mt. Fuji by shovel, for instance, it comes down to 'one shovel-load at a time', doesn't it?"
The irony is that in actual day-to-day living, I can often find myself paralyzed by the scope or scale of a project, or multiple projects, and end up darting between them ineffectively, or worse yet, abandoning them until I have a better approach in mind. This has even impacted the amount of hobby work I have done lately.
Although the best way to complete a large modelling project is to leave it as accessible as possible so that you can work on it as time permits, I vastly prefer to have large, dedicated blocks of time that I can use to really focus on them and easily see my progress. The trouble is, as life gets increasingly busy, and my offspring become more and more active, that sort of time becomes difficult to come by!
I thought for sure I would get more work done on Serenity Gulch once Fenya's obligations to the Edmonton Opera Company were done with, but there is always another event, meeting, visit or committee, or at least that's how it seems. Wanting to complete a bunch of bystanders for some of the scenarios, a posse for Rob, since painting is more difficult for him than for me, some of my own models, plus the need for more buildings and scenery in the town itself, I looked for a day off when I could throw some serious effort at one of those tasks.
But maintenance issues and other commitments seems to conspire against me (or at least, that's how it seemed at the time), until I find myself less than two months out, with a scheduled renovation project jockeying for time with everything else. Some of the participants were hoping to come over for painting bees, since they had no hobby supplies of their own, and weekends were now in short supply. Had my reluctance to do piecemeal work doomed Gaming & Guinness X to be Gulchless?
When it came to a head, I offered a painting session yesterday, which Mike was willing to attend, and furthermore, was willing to take all the paints over to his place, and potentially host some bees at his place (far closer to where the others live) until the bathroom is completed in mid-April.
Breaking the seal on miniature painting after such a long absence felt really good, and I managed to get a couple of Rob's figures largely sorted out, his trail cook and scout:
With the paints out of the house, the first priority is renovation prep, but once that is out of the way, I can get back to work on some buildings and scenery. Once the new bathroom is in place, assembly should be done, for the most part, and I can focus solely on painting up buildings right up until G&G X.
It might not have quite as many structures as I had envisioned at the start, and some of the more ambitious elements I had wanted to add to Serentity Gulch may have to wait until a later date, but it feels good to be moving forward again, even if the pace and dedicated time isn't what I had hoped.
In the end, one bite at a time should get me and this tiny town to where we need to be by the end of May.
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