Count Bricks gives it a try

Posted January 3, 20178 yr

Hi all!

So this morning, I finally managed to choose a Lego forum (= this one) and fill in the registration... And as is common practice in most web forums, I want to make a start by introducing myself.

I was born in 1971 in Germany, where I also live (again, after quite a few years abroad). I'm a computer professional and father to a 9-year-old son, which is where my Lego story starts:

When my son was about four years old and moved from Duplo to Lego, I felt an unknown envy rising with every new box that he was allowed to open and build. I remembered my old childhood and how we could afford so very few Lego bricks - never enough to build what we actually wanted to build. So now, some 30 years later, I was watching my son assembling that stuff, and it was somehow clear that those Legos were his, not mine. And I began to wonder - why does it have to be this way? I mean - I'm earning okay these days, I could in principle afford to buy some Legos for myself. So why don't I go to the shop and get some?

In 2014, I finally gave in and got myself the first Lego boxes. I chose a certain topic for my "collection" (I called it "Steampunk", but the general idea was that I wanted bricks mainly in colours that would allow me to build old buildings, vehicles and technical gadgets) and went for special offers. No big deal - my collection currently numbers about 20.000 bricks - but something to start with. Over the years, I build a few models of my own, but not quite as many as I had hoped to in the beginning.

In autumn 2016, I almost gave up. It had turned out that there were a number of obstacles to building Lego the way that I wanted: Time, space, number of bricks, and noise. For several weeks, I was seriously considering to sell everything on Ebay. But it turned out - I couldn't get myself to do it. I needed more time to really make up my mind, and in the winter holidays, I did. After talking to a Lego enthusiast in my family (and reading some of the helpful advice in Warren Elsmore's book "Lego Mobile"), I decided to give it another try, improve my infrastructure (I'll somehow try to build something like an Ikea Trofast shelf into my office at home) and become more involved, not less.

Which is also why I think it might be a good idea to become part of the Lego community. I just love the great stuff some of you guys are building (in fact, it sometimes keeps me so awed that I get utterly frustrated about my own attempts), I could spend hours just browsing through books and webpages with these masterworks - they're much more art to me than any arts museum could ever be. But hey - everyone has to start somewhere, right? So this is why I came here. I hope to see, to learn, to discuss - and sometimes also to upload some stuff of my own. Just not today; I'm still on holidays and my Lego boxes are some 600 km away. But in the course of the next weeks, I hope to be able to write and show some more (and to get myself a suitable Avatar) and to get to know the forum and its members a bit better.

So see you soon!

Edited January 5, 20178 yr by Count Bricks

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