Update 12

 Well, May was a pretty lean month as far as the blog goes. I guess I was kind of bouncing around a bit and everything felt a bit tentative or uncertain as to what direction I am going in. Got bitten by both the chess bug and the baseball bug and lately the Magic bug again. Some various thoughts have come up.

I) A control mage identity: In Magic the control archetype is one that focuses on a more defensive, and reactive strategy. Instead of aggression you focus on countering your opponents threats. But magic is a deep and sophisticated game so there are a lot of variations and gradations of this strategy. But this archetype is clearly present in chess as well. Petrosian is the world champion who most clearly represents this control mage aspect. But others like Capablanca and Karpov also focused on controlling the opponents counterplay and trying to win with less risk. Part of me feels very drawn to this kind of identity and wanting to explore it in various games. But part of me also feels a bit repulsed by it. There is part of me that also feels drawn to the aggro strategies or the aggressive attacking and sees the control strategy as kind of bloodless and joyless. So that is an interesting duality. Overall I would say I am definitely more interested in the control side of things but I guess in a way I don't need to limit or pigeonhole myself. I guess my idea is to see this idea of a control mage identity as something I can grow into and is more of a starting point rather than necessarily an endpoint.

II) Negative feedback: Basically I have just been thinking that I dislike negative feedback. I dislike losing. I am not the kind of player that tends to rage when I lose. I am more the kind of player that just loses heart when I lose. But one thing I have often heard in the chess world is that it is necessary to review your losses. I think I need to work on coping better with negative feedback and doing more to learn from it rather than getting disheartened.

III) Variety as opposed to focus: Another one that has come up repeatedly in my gaming journey is just this idea of like variety vs focus. I feel like the default view in culture in general as well as in gaming is that focus is better than variety. That you need to get rid of things and just focus on what really matters and get good at that. But I have struggled with this and it seems like a lot of times when I try to do that I end up getting burned out and losing interest. I have tried to take a more polyvalent approach to gaming before but I always seem to collapse into the default idea that I need to focus on one thing and master it. So again, lately I am moving more in this kind of polyvalent direction and wanting to have various games that echo each other and build meta-game ideas (like my control mage identity idea).

That's about it for now. Hopefully I can come up with some good ideas for the blog in June!