confession time: this is bad (and bear with me, it's all about health.

A little over a month ago, I almost touched my ATH on chess.com—I was once more over the magical line of 1500. ( #853488)... Have been 1520-something before.

It's a wonderful feeling of success and achievement, of a long grind finding paying off (#881533). I read into such moments all manner of spiritual things: feeling good, thinking good, being sound in body and soul etc, making calcs and moves flow better.

...what such stories don't tell are the gut-wrenching collapses and failures on the way. There are times, when the demon of despair just consumes me; the objective nature of my poor decision-making staring me riiiiight in the face

Earlier this evening, having felt pretty weird in the afternoon, I cut a long walk short and went home. Didn't feel like work, wasn't hungry, skipped the gym and didn't wanna do my pushups. Don't know how, but I found myself playing some games of chess.

Things had been steady and gradually improving for a while. After a few games I hit 1488—vertigo high, and higher than I've been in over a month.

Plenty of other things on my mind right now, and reality asserted itself fairly quickly. Seven games in a row, I lost. A few re-balancing, a handful of draws etc, but then the slide down the chasm continued... Another streak of eight losses in a row.

...and that's when I get stuck. It absolutely eats me from the inside that I can't get a grip on this thing I actually know how to do. Why didn't I see that the queen was unprotected?, how did I miss that fork? Why can't I just be better! In life, as well as on the 64 squares.

I counted 59 games: 38 losses, 3 draws and 17 wins... The numbers are brutal, shoving me close to below 1300. All in one go, one evening, one sitting. It's astonishing and terrifying all at once.

It's 1 am, and I'm not even sure how I got here. Tiny little decisions, repeated over and over and over, for really really bad outcomes. This isn't how I wanted to spend my evening; this isn't how I want to do things. But alas, here I am—again—seeing the chess rating move like bitcoin's price (equally retarded...), a strong reflection of the many other doubts and concerns, difficulties and struggles troubling my subconscious.

The perceived powerlessness, the unbearable conviction that nothing else matters. That I must redeem myself from my abysmal performance.

Yea, it's very weird. Very painful. Very real and very life-like.

Gnight, frens.