AFOL

Look what I’ve got! 😊

Yeah okay, it’s Lego. I’m an AFOL – an Adult Fan of Lego. Though I hate that we have label everything these days.

My day job takes it out of me, a lot of mental agility required, depression puts me inside my head, I write. All these things are very mind-centric, they get me so wrapped up in my own head that I end up screaming in there. Lego brings me out of that.

Building these big set pieces means that I have to think about what I’m doing. It brings me into the here and now without mindfulness, meditation or the new age stuff that makes me scoff.

For clarity –

Mindfulness = good.
Meditation = good.
New age stuff = mostly good, but trips into bollocks all too often, and that’s what I scoff at.

I’m a bit, well I don’t know what it is actually. My husband and daughter like to have piles of their bricks and look for the piece that they want. I like to sort my bricks, make stacks of as much as I can first. I stack according to size, shape and colour. Then I can gather together what each page says I need and then build it. I think it’s a methodical way of working, I deny being anal about theses things. It’s also a way of extending the pleasure as far as I’m concerned. And it results in less brick crashing noise so I can make Lego and watch TV if I want.

It’s also well known that making stuff, however you create it, is therapeutic, so this is another form of natural health for me, a way to treat my poor mental health. And if the clinicians scoff at that, I don’t care, I enjoy it.