The Little World

I mean a worse feeling than seeing someone succeed brilliantly with a model kit, material, or technique that you have failed in.

Not bad enough that you threw your model against the wall, but the other person has managed to win a medal with theirs.

Jealousy is a green-eyed monster in many fields; love, business, art, etc. but it is nowhere near as bad as in scale modelling when you can get so many different shades of green. And as soon as you blink some rotten sod comes with a reference book to prove it’s the wrong colour.

Many kits are common…the numbers of Spitfires, Messerschmitts, Mustangs, etc are too many to count. So if you do something of the standard kit you can always be certain of encountering one done by someone else. If theirs is better and they know it and you know it and they know you know, it can all be a field of tears. It’s one reason that I build oddities, and build them for reasons that no-one else does. I remove myself from competition and comparison. If you pick a really arcane subject in an unknown scheme the anoraks cannot come up and ping you.

There is also the rather off-putting sight of someone else doing an idea before you. You may have nurtured a scheme for ages or succeeded in getting a rare kit, but when you see it done already you inevitably feel that you’re just a copyist. You seek out an unlikely variant or settle for the unattractive colour combo. Even if you go ahead and build it is an unsatisfactory result.

What to do? Avoid all other modellers, all the time. Shun the internet and never buy modelling magazines. Stay away from modelling shows. Do your shopping on line so that you cannot see anyone you know buying in the hobby shop. If forced into company, try to get a good quality pair of horse blinkers and wear them.