When you can't sit down to do some modeling or painting or get over to your local game store for a small pick-up game, you find yourself filling your hobby time with other "hobby related" things. None of them are very productive really.
1. You check your favorite sites and then you check them again.
Even though you know they won't post anything for another day or so, you keep checking back just in case you missed something. You never know.
2. You link surf into oblivion.
You start following links to places and things you would never normally check out. You might start out with something like "how to paint white" and the next thing you know, you're reading about the life expectancy of a South American seahorse.
3. You stalk the large bulletin boards.
Of course it only takes 15 seconds to catch up on what you missed since you last visited, but the next thing you know, you're giving someone advice about Warmachine even though you've never actually played a game. Worse yet, you find yourself seriously debating the pros and cons of kitting out a space marine tactical squad with rebreathers in case they lose their helmets despite it not being an option in the codex.
4. You make big plans and scrap those for even bigger plans.
Even though you don't have the money or the time, you plan out your 34 thousand point Sisters of Battle force that you're going to convert every model in. Then you write the list a few million times until you get it just right. Once you have your list, you head over to Forge Word and plan out just how many Titans you're going to need first your first three Apocalypse force org charts.
5. You fiddle with your blog.
That sounds much dirtier than it really is. You start looking around for ways to "improve" your site and the next thing you know, you're adding a live streaming polar bear cam to your site because it seems relevant to your Dark Eldar or at least it did last night.
6. You don't use your time wisely doing something like cleaning up.
Even though you may have the time to go through all your old paints and finally organize your bits, you don't do it because you don't want to upset the delicate balance you've managed to achieve up to this point. Besides, if you organized everything, how would you find it then?
7. You watch official GW videos for things you might have missed.
Thinking you might have missed something during one of the first hundred times you watched it, you watch the preview for the Daemons of Chaos Advance Order video again. They might have snuck something in there since you last viewed it 3 minutes ago.
Seriously though, we all have our ways of filling our time with these kinds of things. I don't have any way to model or paint right now, so I'm guilty of most of these (especially the seahorse thing, it's 1 to 5 years depending on the species).
Hobby time is our great escape, enjoy it and use it however you want.
As for me, I've got some more seahorse research to do.
Make sure to check out these posts as they might help:
How hobby store time differs from real world time
Outside of the hobby, what compete's for your free time?
