Bangarang

The last few weeks I've been reading a lot of the medieval fantasy series A Song of Fire and Ice. I've also been trying to teach myself how to play chess. I'm not sure if the two things originated from the same medieval curiosity, but I found this coincidence of concept amusing. Both have been very good methods of keeping myself entertained on the train. I read the second half of Storm of Swords, the best part of the series so far, in less than a week. I found myself almost looking forward to the long train journeys in some perverse way. They offered over an hour to read a book, and chess on my smart phone to play when I was too sweaty to read.

There's something awesome when you're in the middle of a good TV series or novel and all you want to do is escape from real life and pick the story back up. I had a thought, triggered by that feeling, that perhaps that could be what I was best at in life. Consuming media. There are many talented writers, musicians, photographers, video game developers and the older I grow the more obvious it becomes to me that I probably won't be joining their ranks. Watching TV, however, and reading, playing computer games, listening to music. I am so awesome at that. Next to convincing myself to have a beer on Sunday evening it's probably the most advanced talent I have.

At what point in life do you accept that you are average and embrace spending the rest of your life trying to balance making money with spending it on entertainment and experiences with friends and loved ones? If I spent less time trying to write and photograph and be creative, and dedicated that time to finding new and exciting limits of entertainment, how much more satisfied could I be?

After being thrashed countless times by programmed chess players who never make mistakes I decided I would stop trying to guess my way to chess mastery and I Googled chess opening strategies. After trying to read about them for about five minutes I then started watching YouTube videos on chess opening strategies. At this point it hit me that the way chess masters talk about chess is exactly the same way that Starcraft II pros sound when they talk over epic replays of 1v1 matches. Except instead of a strategy being first made famous by a Korean teenager in April, it's a strategy first made famous by an Italian in 1400. Obviously finding life's purpose by entertaining one's self is not a novel concept.