A MODELMAKER’S LIFE: WHEN I SIMPLY DON’T WANT TO BUILD MODELS…

When I’m in one of those moods, I can’t even pick up a scalpel, I’m that disinterested in modelling and building models.

2nd February 2026

When I set this diary up a year ago, I decided that it would be a warts and all look at my life in the hobby and industry. If I had good days, I’d say. If I had bad days, I’d tell you about those as well. Over the months there have been plenty of ups and downs, so here’s another entry that takes you through a day when modelling was the last thing I wanted to do.

Building models for a living is really all I’ve ever wanted to do. From a small boy I’ve been obsessed with everything to do with the hobby and for the last 30 years, the industry that has paid my wages. There hasn’t been a single day go by where I’ve not endlessly thought about what I’m going build and how I’m going to build it. But here’s the thing; there are some days when I want to do anything but build models, days where I can’t even walk into the workshop, such is my need to be away from it. Today was one of those days.

Part of it was down to another broken night of little sleep, after which I greeted the morning with less than cheery enthusiasm. Not a good start.

Having had breakfast, Liz and I decided it might be best to start the day with a walk, something I agreed would be useful if only to clear my head and the malaise that I was enduring.

Upon my return I decided that I needed to start work but simply couldn’t find the drive to even think about it, let alone sit at to my desk and continue to stick little plastic parts together. Truth be told I was becoming so agitated by the idea, I decided that my best course of action was to take an impromptu day off, do something else and hope that my mood would settle and my desire to build would return in the morning.

These spells never last long, but they can be debilitating. I have to be in the mood to build models to the best of my ability, anything less than that and my work suffers and the results are never where I want them to be. More than that though, when I’m in one of those moods, I can’t even pick up a scalpel, I’m that disinterested in modelling and building models.

Fingers crossed I get some sleep tonight so I can get back to work in the morning. Time is ticking away and I have work to deliver this month so I’m not in a position to take much more time off. Yeah, fingers crossed.

See you tomorrow.