Karl's Bricks

Welcome to Karl’s Bricks! 

 

In the recent past it seemed like everyone had something they worked toward excelling at to take their mind off the stresses of work and home. Each town had many people doing everything from impressive model train layouts, building or restoring furniture, growing a beautiful garden, building or fixing cars, or perfecting an array of delicious recipes. We have more free time on our hands than ever in history but hobbies seemed have mostly vanished.  People have gotten away from doing things with their hands and minds and turned towards consuming content on an array of devices that can be summed up as glow boxes.

 

As a culture we have found ourselves more involved in observing instead of doing ourselves:  watching sports, streaming shows or movies, or interacting with smartphones.  Most of these are designed to lull the watcher into a trance like state to download just one more unit of content in the viewer’s mind.  Video games, while interactive, are not much better as achievements cannot be shared with anyone other than another player as meaningful.  Most people can enjoy the results of hobbies as casual viewers such as going to a car show or buying items at bake sales and not share the same level of involvement as required by a watcher of a series or a player of a game.  Taking some pleasure in viewing these is not a bad thing to be avoided at all costs, but like candy for dinner, the long term results will not provide fulfillment or happiness for the people who choose only to do this.

 

There is one more hurdle that modern technology has given us that was not a problem in the past when trying to do a hobby.  Instead of enjoying the result of a hobby locally even with imperfections, we are bombarded with images or videos of the seemingly impossible from what seems like a huge number of people.  One search on Google will show thousands of images by as many creators that can turn a thought of “I want to do that” into “I’m never going to be able to do that.” This causes a significant loss of motivation for those trying a new hobby and can lead to frustrations and feelings of failure if someone desires to do something else with their time than just consume.  This is reinforced by content that pits masters of their craft against each other with stunning results and depicting any failure as a loss.  Trying something new is difficult and that is good.

 

Removing yourself from this world of seeming perfection and focusing on creating something else for just a couple hours per week is a worthwhile pursuit for everyone.  Lego is a hobby that makes sense for me.  While many may not see it that way I would encourage them to take up a different hobby and perhaps we can enjoy each other’s creations instead of trying to tear each other’s passions down.

 

Karl’s Bricks is starting by offering reviews focusing on Lego sets and “Lego Adjacent” items with a focus on the Adult Fan of Lego (AFOL) market.  Our reviews aim to help make collecting, displaying, sorting and building Lego more accessible to new AFOLs and have some fun while doing it.  As we grow we hope to add value to your hobby or at least give you a realistic and honest opinion of a set.  I tend of to have a critical eye for things, so please keep that in mind when reading the “Frustrations” sections in each review.

 

Thank you for choosing to spend some of your time with us and please sign up for our newsletter below.  We will not spam you with a bunch of nonsense.  As we are able to we will be doing Lego and Lego Adjacent product giveaways, so even if you are not an avid AFOL but know someone who is a collector you can make their day a little brighter!

 

- Karl