A hiatus and a new beginning?

I have been neglecting a lot in my life recently due to many life changing events that have ocurred over the last couple of years. I think I am now getting things back on track slowly but surely but hobby time has suffered a fair bit as a result.

You may recognise the above symbol from one or two of my other blogs - it is meant to represent the crossroads I am at and the possibilty of directions my life can now go in. Hopefully, it will be a positive direction no matter the path I take.

Last year I was quite ill throughout the summer and, added to the fact I am now responsible for the kids after splitting with my wife, I had to cancel many gaming events - mainly my weekly Wednesday D&D 5E night.

I managed a couple of guest appearances for my Gnome Wizard during the autumn half-term and winter school holidays, luckily partaking in the final couple of episodes of the campaign so far - hopefully it will be starting up again this coming summer once the DM has completed some work related stuff. I also managed to find the time for a session to roll up a Pendragon character (sadly not used him to play with yet), and a Ranger for another D&D session only a couple of weeks back.

So, I have managed to keep my hand in a little with the gaming side of things in my life, but mostly it has been in the form of reading forums and blogs just to keep up with news of what is happening in the gaming world (that said, I have only really been doing that since the new year turned anyway) and perusing a few of the rulebooks I bought a year or two back to see how I could utilise them going forwards - I am stoked about the latest Games Workshop Middle Earth : Strategy Battle Game stuff.

I have many thoughts on what I would like to achieve gaming wise over the next year or two but, alas, these ruminations are limited to times when I am contemplating all the other things in my life, so they generally take a bit of a back seat to those more important life decisions. Currently, my hobby time is of the lowest priority - life style events are taking more of a front seat (concerts, theatre and travel will be taking more of my time in the coming months).

The only other sort of gaming related stuff I have been doing is reading my massive backlog of comics. My 2000AD and Judge Dredd collection has now been read from the beginning again, up to and including Prog 2014 (i.e. the end of the calendar year 2013). I have now decided to take a break from them at this point so I could read my Dynamite collection of Red Sonja comics. Once these are read, I will read the year 2014 pile of 2000ADs, then go back to my odds and ends American sized comics, before getting another year's worth of 2000ADs and finally my Dark Horse Conan tales. After that I will complete my 2000AD collection - all-in-all, I think I should be kept busy reading them for at least another full year. The reason I mention above that these are kind of gaming related is that I mine them for scenario ideas in my own gaming worlds, as well as just enjoying them for what they are - darned good reads!

Well, that is just a little update just to let you all know that I am still contemplating gaming even if nothing is really happening at the moment. Hopefully things will improve this year and I will get more painting done from the lead and plastic mountain and I may even get some actual miniature gaming done on the dining room table with my sons.