Why I got into Wargaming, and why you might want to as well.

This year I decided to get back into modeling and getting into wargaming. Some might wonder how is this related to my professional / personal life and also why is it relevant for others. This is most likely not relevant for the non fans, but I decided to share my experience in case others might find it usefull or as guidance.

Creativity flow and combating burnout.

A lot of energy in the past has gone into professional endeavors. For example during the time I worked in the Telecom world, work was very demanding and non stop. Networks and outages could spark anytime, un noticed. Any Saturday or Late night am emergency respond team might need to be sprung into action to contain DDos Attack, A BGP Loop, a Flood storm, or the more common Fiber Cut, Energy incidents the list is enormous.

At the same time this period was full of creativity and new projects. We were busy playing with real world things, cables, metal, routers, servers, fiber adapters, machines etc etc. It was just like if kids were left loose on a Datacenter and City but people mistook us for adults due to our oversize suits. This was one of my favorite parts of my professional career.

Despite this, PTSD took a toll. The limbic brains after so many triggers gets into hyper alert mode and wears out. Eventually I became non functioning and unable to disconnect from my professional life, it affected other areas of my life and almost cause me a divorce. Thanksfully I went to therapy. The therapist labelled me as a creative person. She said if I had not stuck to Engineering mostly due to financial preasurss I could have certaintly end up in Arts, Writing, drama or other creative endevour. A 1700 ship builder perhaps. Eventually I discovered Im a builder and story teller at the core. Those two character trains tend to bring me the most joy.

Software is great and all but is lacking

Eventually I moved into the Software Stack. Site Reliability, the logical upgrade from my Telecom past. Large companies with larger budgets tend to pay better for Ops Roles in the Software domains. Problems tend to be different, but less ranchy than Hardware problems. However eventually I did notice I was missing a tangible creative outlet. I decided to revive an old hobby from when I was a kid, miniature assembly and paint. Models from the brands Revell, Airfix, Heller. Anything from Airplanes, cars, ships, tanks, rockets at your disposal in a small 1:72 or smaller scale. I started building and painting.

A lot of adjacents fields.

Model Buildings, Radio Control, Dioramas, Christmass Village Building, Photography, Dungons and Dragons, War Gaming, Warhammer 40K, Miniature Trains are all very adjacent fields.

All take some form of miniaturized equipment and assemble it. Some forms build a lot of terrain. Some forms make it picture worthy. Some keep it permanent. Some forms make it static permant for the future. All have an appreciation for Engineering and detail. Most of this project have an insane level of complexity and project management. 100, 200 pieces, colors, materials, decisions etc. Compared to Lego the decisions and possibilities are much higher, the end result is widely varied. In most projects you enter not thinking is possible to do it, and come on the other end as a slightly different more competent person.

Yes, the following pictures are a Diorama, they are not a real size shot, rather a miniature setup so perfect to trick the eye.

Wargaming has a special place.

Wargaming is a special kind of beast. You have miniatures, but you need large amount to have an army. Maybe even two armies or more. You need terrain to play a full scenario. Terrain js not cheap so you need to look at a large amount of techniques to repurpose material cheaply and in large quantities, grass, flock, houses, trees. It needs to be realistic.

After all this work for usually weeks or months you get to enjoy your first games, then you have all the complex roll dice and game dynamics. Then you go into the difficult art of wage war, strategize and tactics.

I decided to start with a starter set of Team Yankee. A game of Tanks, with 2 armies Americans and Russians dates at the end of the Cold war, but with machinery you still see until today. The starter set is cheap, around 60€ for a large amount of tanks around 15 total. I though this would give me a large amount of time to build and paint this 15 tanks.

One of the nice things about building miniatures is the task is so focused. Due to the low scale and the focus needed your mind forgets about the outside world. You get into this creative flow and your brain disconnects from other things happening. Is one of the closest experiences I have to meditation, but instead of sitting quiet in the middle of my room, Im busy building and at the end I have something to feel proud about. This is why I think model building is so powerfull.

Also creativity and fire streaks spill over other places. I can see it at work, I can see it showing up in the kitchen. The act of building something, beutiful and proud servers as a driver to conquest other tasks. It doesnt matter is Kubernetes is kicking you in the mouth, you finished this Nice looking F15 this week, you can eat the world.

Theres also some balance of lone wolf and social animal in this endevours. Most builds are quite solo, similar to Dioramas, however the gaming makes it so much fun to gather old acquiances and friends. If you go the D&D route you have all the extra options for Character Building, Fiction Creation and Roleplay, which in my opinion are such healers in adult life.

Make your 8 year old self, proud.

No matter how cliché it sounds, the more I put effort as an adult to make 8 year old me proud, the easier and enjoyable life becomes. Its really shameful that we adults have restricted ourselves so many avenus of play, creativity and art. I have no doubt that the largest Engineering builders such as X,Y were just kids trapped on oversized suits playing with their sponsors money and letting their inner kid took over.