I spent the last week taken out of the game rudely by the latest and greatest blessing from Nurgle that’s going around. Before that happened, I had an experience that I think applied both to my miniature painting and my life as a small-scale or microcosm example, and also to the wider situation in Canada in Newfoundland right now with respect to the global political turmoil over the course of the last month, particularly everything in terms of trade war, annexation threads, and existential dread making its way here from our neighbour to the south. And I thought it would be a good story to come back with.

My workplace recently did a week of extra training activities, a lot of them focused on “resilience” as a start-off point given the roller coaster of events in the last several years. A lot of it was recyclable corporate mumbo-jumbo that was less intended to give us tools to help ourselves, and more intended to make us better conforming, functioning participants in the kind of office work spaces where the rules frequently change without warning, and where nothing is fair. One of the things they put up in the office as part of this was a bulletin board, where we were invited to take a post-it-note and tack it onto the board, saying what we were going to do to “thrive” in the year 2025.

On a whim, I filled out one of the little cards, with the words “Painting Some Li’l Dudes,” without giving any further context. I didn’t think anything further of it, until hours later as I was seated at my desk and a crowd of coworkers who I’ve never met or had a conversation with before walked by, talking amongst themselves, and I overheard them trying to figure out what the hell “Painting Some Li’l Dudes” meant. Needless to say it felt like the highlight of the day and I was very pleased with myself.

Things are pretty bad right now. In some respects, I don’t know if I can ever remember them being this bad, or the forecast looking this grim. And I think that there’s a lot of work to do – writing letters to our Members of Parliament, doubling down on our efforts to support causes that will look out for the people who are most marginalized by economic, ecological, and political crises here. I think there’s a necessity, though, to make sure our cup is full enough that we can pour from it. Sometimes I hear the “airplane” analogy used here that you have to put your own mask on before you help somebody else with theirs, and I think that applies too. I need to cultivate and nourish and feed a better version of myself if I want to be a better helper to others.

Feeding myself is going to involve spending a lot more time around others, and in my community, and building better, integrated relationships with my partner, with my family, and with my friends. It also means feeding my mind and my spirit better, and it means making things with my hands instead of just consuming, consuming, consuming. So an important part of my survival strategy going into the next year is, indeed, “Painting Some Li’l Dudes.” – I’ve got a whole slew of projects from my shame pile that I want to spend the year completing, especially since what’s looking like an increasingly uphill economic battle means that we’re going to have to tighten our belts here for a while.

Two of these li’l dudes are the last couple Eldar models in my shame pile at the time that I hadn’t painted, and the third – the Solitaire – was a Christmas gift to me from my partner. Most of the time it takes me like a year of turnaround to go from buying a kit to entering it into the shame pile, building it, and then getting around to painting it once I clear the preceding backlog, but this was one that I just couldn’t wait to do, and that I’m very happy with. I based it largely on the “Daze” video by “Poets of the Fall”, as part of what’s become a bit of a long running joke between us about the music video and the Aeldari Harlequins. Very happy with how all of these turned out and I have lots of ideas for the next pile of little dudes ahead. We’ll get through this.