One of my regular blog reads, ‘Motorised Dandruff’, has been very quiet recently.  However, I found I could identify with this recent post:

The major problem I have is one of perfectionist block (I think that’s what its called). I can have a vision of what I want to achieve, but lacking the skills (or confidence in those skills) to get to that vision means that it doesn’t get past the starting post. Or that the order of the steps is crucial, and a lack of confidence in a future step can scuttle the current one.. I guess it might be a hangover from my current professional career. This involves every step being planned in advance, and nothing happens until every step to the final one is visualised. OK its not quite like this, but in chemistry if things go wrong, they can go wrong very fast and people get hurt (or at least have to fill in lots of paperwork discussing what went wrong).

In some ways working on the house has been good for this. I’ve now learnt to push a small project through till its either finished, or won’t leak during winter. I can leave it there and go and do something else. I’ve also been dabbling in another prototype / scale which allows me to build without worrying about whether its prototypical or not (since I’m making it up). Its also nice to be “mostly” working with RTR models for a change.

This is so ‘me’ too!  I hesitate to take the plunge at some modelling task in case I get it wrong.  But what does it matter?  Usually you can rescue your mistakes or just throw it away and start again.  I can also identify with the comments above in that modifying ‘Earl’s Wood’ has really helped my modelling juices (and I must finish the new fiddle yard now I’m home).  And just taking some RTR models down to ESNG and giving them a run – and watching everyone else’s trains go by – has kept my interest in the hobby going.

The remedy – just get on with it!!  Mental note – must do just that.