Subject:
|
Re: Question to all the other train clubs / Long answer from FGLTC member no. 1
|
Newsgroups:
|
lugnet.trains.org
|
Date:
|
Fri, 15 Aug 2003 20:15:08 GMT
|
Viewed:
|
1041 times
|
| |
|
|
In lugnet.trains.org, John Gerlach wrote:
Hello J1,
I am very sorry to read about your not too good experiences on the clubs
development. The GMLTC has always been one of the highlights in the train scene
and - at least from European view - it has always been number one or two in
permanent competition with the PNLTC.
And it has been very interesting to see the different ways these two clubs
seemed to work. Plywooders against millions of bricks in 3-D-landscape. Lots of
“loosely” organized members with each own bricks and building styles against one
main owner of tons of LEGO® bricks + more talented builders around him.
| |
Our train club is stagnating. Hardly anyone shows up to our building
sessions, and productivity has dropped to almost nothing. We’ve lost
direction, we’ve lost enthusiasm, we’ve lost commitment.
Help?!
|
| |
What can our club do to make things fun again?
|
Question back at you: When and why has it stopped to be fun?
| |
I’m sick of asking and asking for people to actually show up and get stuff
done.
|
Why pushing them? They will have less fun, when forced to come along and build.
I think your club members are no car workers or mayors that come to work to
build cars or houses. If your club meetings are kind of obligation instead of
fun: why should people joining?
| |
And the few of us that actually try to get things built are sick of being the
only people doing the work,
|
Hey - that is no work! If so, stop your “hobby”! A hobby should be pure fun -
sometimes a bit combined with stress and “work”, but still it should be much
more fun than work.
At that point, where it becomes more work than fun, just take a break and stop
your hobby (as some of your club members seem to have done already).
| |
especially since our club is known for its talented builders.
|
But I see it more as a kind of building art than building work. I cannot do
brilliant MOCs under the pressure to do them. I need time and I need the freedom
to destroy my creation as long as I am not 100% satisfied with it. When there
was a club meeting and I was forced to build a stupid squaremeter of landscape
or a few new houses just to fill space - I think I would hate to do so...
| |
I’m just about ready to walk away for a long hiatus...
|
Do so, but please come back. If there are other troubles behind the scenes of
your club, maybe you should divide it into two minor clubs. Or leave the club
for another one if there is any. Why not? We are talking about the hobby. This
should be fun. If not, go away (for a while) and wait if the old feeling for the
LEGO® bricks, the hobby and the friends reappears.
From my personal experience I just can report from lots of former “LEGO®
addicted” who have managed to get back into normal life. I am sorry for having
lost some former friends - on the other hand: if your hobby becomes a load on
your mood, why stay in the hobby? I do NOT want you to leave, but as long as you
feel forced to stay in the hobby, I fear you will leave in future and never come
back again.
So take a break - NOW!! Stop reading Lugnet, stop answering LEGO® fans mail,
stop even playing with your own bricks. After a few weeks you might enjoy all
this again.
I myself have had two breaks in my hobby over the past 5 years. Each time I left
all activities for nearly 10 weeks. Both time community flame wars and the
feeling to be obliged to mix in have made me more and more aggressive against my
hobby and Co-Afols.... Being to “popular” and well known within the community I
got in average 30 LEGO® mails each day before I went into my last break. Most of
these mails came from people that were nearly unknown to me. But only nearly
unknown. So I felt obliged to answer each of these mails. And lots of them have
been quite demanding or impolite. Mails like “Want to buy your 77x0 - what is
your price?” “Tell me where I can get the brick with number xyz? / the sticker
from set yzx?” “What do you think about the ebay auction/seller/buyer #yxz?” -
- There have been hundreds of mails like these and in the end I hated them
really as much as possible.
Today I ignore this kind of mail (the impolite ones) or write back a
preformulated standard mail like “I never do answer questions on the topics x, y
or z, because of the reasons u, v, and w.” That ended with getting no longer
mail of this type and I had more time to enjoy the hobby again.
| |
There was a time when
we were one of the premier LTCs in the country, but now a LOT of groups have
long passed what we’re doing. We’re basically becoming a second-tier club.
|
And what is so wrong about? This is hobby and not competition for profit. Better
you enjoy to be in the second line, instead of being first and hate it....
| |
Suggestions, anyone? We need help!
|
It is Friday evening and I have nothing else to do, so I take the time to answer
a little bit more exhaustive. Please be patiant with me.....
*********
Maybe your club is suffering under the direction as I have given at the
beginning: the plywooders might have more fun - does that sound sensefull to
you?
For the FGLTC I have tried to go in direction of GMLTC-like landscaping for
quite a long time, but I never had the chance to win further friends for this
way, which affords so much more efforts in bricks and even worse: so much
organizational work to define the borders between the modules (if these belong
to more than 1 person).
Since nearly 2 years we are full back on the very flexible trail. Start the
layout on groundplates and stay flexible to rearrange your layout for every
single show-layout. I am convinced by doing it this way, it is much easier to
win new active members (they just have to add their part of town, village
airport somewhere as it exists already) and I am also of the opinion by doing so
we are able do reach higher overall quality, since all efforts are put into
buildings and “man-made” stuff. But still there is the possibility to go into
the third dimension if anybody wants to (see the www.FGLTC.org mainpage for out
latest work in this field), but you are not obliged to do landscape.
I wish you and all your Co-AFOLs from the GMLTC all the best - and please come
back after a while - I really would miss your creations!
Leg Godt!
my Homepage:
P.s.: I relly would like to hear about other peoples stories about being fed up
with the hobby and their way of getting back to it! Please mix in!
|
|
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Question to all the other train clubs
|
| Our train club is stagnating. Hardly anyone shows up to our building sessions, and productivity has dropped to almost nothing. We've lost direction, we've lost enthusiasm, we've lost committment. Help?! What can our club do to make things fun again? (...) (21 years ago, 14-Aug-03, to lugnet.trains.org, FTX)
|
10 Messages in This Thread:
 
- Entire Thread on One Page:
- Nested:
All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:
All | Brief | Compact
|
|
|
|
