Right now, I'm sitting down to work on a new Castle MOC that I started yesterday. It's a mead hall, slightly based off of Heorot from the epic-poem Beowulf; mine, however, takes more of a turn for 14th-century Medieval architecture than early Norse structures.

But as I was adding a stained glass window to the front of the building, just above the doors, I realized that, in MOCing, I have become too perfectible. What I mean by this is (because I'm at a lack of fancy words at the moment), when I was younger, to me 'building' just meant getting whatever pieces looked cool and putting them together on a baseplate or a ship hull or anything big and simple, to make something even bigger and even simpler. Now, however, I strive to achieve the most perfect MOCs, using just the right pieces, even spending days or weeks trying to find them, studying others designs and concepts for building, taking long periods of times to build. I realize that, in a way, this IS the correct way of MOCing anything, and I don't have anything against it. But, whenever I look at this whole process and compare it to the fun that building used to be, MOCing has taken away from me more than it has given me.

Granted, what MOCing has given me is a sense of self-confidence and pride in what I do and how far I've come. I'm going to be honest, I have come a very long way, even if I'm still using Inika torsos or simple designs on things. And what I've made, I'm proud to have made, especially the MOCs as of late, such as the Photomancer Golem, the Liberator mech, and the Recumbent Effigy. So I'm clearing that up now - I love MOCing, and I love what I have made. For the most part.

What my bold statement really means is that, when I was young, I would build something simple, think it was cool, and then play with it for hours and hours upon end (along the way, around the age of 14-15, though, I hurriedly started using the word 'RPing', and I still don't know if it was for better or for worse ). All my creations would have the cool stuff on them - pieces of alien ships, Castle walls, an innumerable amount of swords, guns, and God knows what else that I considered in the very least weapons, glowing things, baseplates, wings, cannons....it was only a matter of reaching into a piece-bucket and quietly saying to myself, as I picked through the pieces, "Ooh, that looks cool...that's dumb....I could use this..."

I guess I still do that now, but ever since I've started looking at others MOCs, specifically all the AFOL masterpieces that literally made me pose the =O emote, I've wanted to achieve higher and better standards for building, somehow seeking happiness along the way.

For those of you who don't know (AKA probably all of you, except maybe Xinlo and Ferhago), I have a system of 12 drawers that I use to keep all of my pieces in (well, those that aren't in shoe-boxes or on my small table that I never use). Here is a picture of said drawers (minus the BC Rich Bronze Warlock). I'm betting that, from the picture, you can see what drawers contain which genre of pieces - Bionicle/Technic, System, and Instruction Booklets/Obscure Pieces of Paper (that's totally not what a desk is for). See all those that have System pieces in them? I very rarely touch those drawers. But why?

Back in the day, I dug through all of my drawers! Primarily because everything was mixed and there was no segregation between Technic and System, but that's aside the point. I feel that its because I've moved onto doing specific MOCs. I specifically build Castle structures that are gray. I specifically build Forest-themed things. I specifically build Bipeds and very complex weaponry to be used by said bipeds. I specifically make Minifigs that have more melee weapons and less ranged, unless it's something like a bow/crossbow or would be seen in Steampunk. You get the picture.

But I just wish I could be young again (strange - I'm 16 and I already feel old), so that I could just reach into those bins and dig out whatever I want, build whatever I want, without some dumb little conscience of MOCing telling me 'No no, don't use that part, it's got a design on it', or 'Make it a bit more rounded - here, go this way. Don't use that big, obstructive thing. It looks stupid.'.

So, after I'm done with this mead hall and I get all of my projects for 4-H done, I'm going to clear off my table (it needs it, anyway) and make a moonbase. That was a common thing I used to build all the time. And I'm not going to think about it whilst building it, I'm not going to nitpick myself, I'm not going to listen to that little voice in my head (there are far more interesting ones up there). I'm just going to revert myself back to the mind of a simple moonbase. And hopefully, maybe, just maybe, I'll break this little depression.