Tuesday 2 June 2020

Decluttering the mind


Decluttering the mind

One of the things that defines my modelling is that I have to keep moving. I do get a gentle ribbing from certain quarters about selling layouts in a short period after building, but I need to move on. Part of this is lack of storage space, partly a restless mind. I need to find a new idea all the time; not a new model, a new idea. One thing that puzzles me about certain people is the continual recycling of one idea and often linked with recycling the same items of stock, but never moving on. This is not the same as the one man-one life layouts such as Buckingham; I find this fixed lifetime goal pre-set far more logical.

I hit certain points where I need to pivot and I'm in one of those moods now. If someone walked in and offered to take the whole lot away, I wouldn't object. It would give me a clear space and a clean mental sheet to work on. I wrote a short while ago about compressing the ideas/stock etc. This is all part of the same thought process - a reduction of stuff and a reduction of mental clutter. With no shows for the foreseeable future this is a good time to do this.

In all seriousness, if there's any existing layouts that you might like, I'm open to offers. Email in the top right box.

2 comments:

  1. It is interesting that people have different approacches, and the factors involved. I can, and once did, imagine a life where a railway eveovled with me, preferably in the garden. Now i have a suitable garden but doubt I have enough active life left to see it evolve. I sort of get returning to a theme in an attemptto capture somethign different with each iteration.

    What I've never really understood is the fun in retaining a simple layout beyond its sell by date. That is whether you calculate the best before in terms of quality of modelling or a play factor.

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  2. I think there are strong crossovers between approaches to railway modelling and approaches in other creative arts and crafts. Some want to endlessly create much the same thing in much the same way because their pleasure is in The Making of something they think beautiful or worthy. Others want to dedicate their lives to one Great Project. Yet others want to explore new worlds and new...

    Sorry, got a bit distracted. I mean new subjects, new compositions, new techniques.

    If I were to ever get back into modelling I would be torn between the Talyllyn circa 1910, a French roadside metre gauge tramway, 3' gauge in Nevada, and a 42" gauge Chilean nitrate hauler with overhead electric boxcabs, and in the mdelling I'd try to incorporate as much as I could from my 12 years as a professional architectural modeller rather than go back to my adolescent hobby skills.

    The modelling motivation I find most alien is that of the nostalgic who only ever wants model their boyhood railway experience.

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