Knowing Nothing, and Starting Over · 8:26pm Feb 26th, 2023
For the past year and a half, I have been attempting to learn Chess. I started out at 100 ELO, which is to say I started out at the very bottom. I couldn't beat anybody for the first few weeks, and before this, I had never won against anyone in my life, not even a computer. After I finally understood enough to know how to win, I started winning one game out of every five.
From where, it took me several months to work myself up to 200ELO, which is still abysmal but not as bad as I once was. Since then, I've managed to claw myself up to 750 ELO, which is still really bad. What's worse, I am making about a half-dozen game-losing mistakes per game, which is after all of the studying I've done into it.
I'm bringing this up because it helped me to understand something about myself, something I thought was true, but now I had evidence to believe it was so: I'm extremely stupid. I don't have any ability to think for myself, or to reason anything out, or to plan anything. It's not just in chess, but in life as well. I'm about to turn 31, and every single other family member knows how to take care of themselves better than I do. They are all smarter than I am, more confident than I have, and have more friends than I do. Despite my efforts, I have not made a single friend since I moved up to Washington State seven years ago. I am the only one of my siblings to still be a virgin, and I'm the oldest of them all.
I have to face facts: I am a loser. A failure of a human being.
With regards to writing, I started practicing again this year, and started a bible for my story A Little Cream for a Lotta Coco, but I've just been putting it off. I have to add that I am lazy as well. I have two stories I want to continue, and I am going to find a way to continue with it.
But I'm entering my 31st year with absolutely not a single dollop of faith in myself. I don't believe that I know a single thing about anything. Nothing about the important issues of today, nothing about how the world works, nothing about how to write at all. Absolutely nothing whatsoever.
I am going to continue with both A Little Cream and A Young Mind, but I need a lot of practice. I'm going to story writing very short stories, just to practice writing. How to create characters, how to write a setting, how to move a conflict along, how to spell and punctuate correctly. If I can stick with this, I'll start posting my stuff here for people to read.
I need to start with any source I can find about the absolute basics of a story. I believe that I know nothing about anything, so this will be a good start, I feel.
I am starting from the very bottom, assuming I know nothing about writing a story. Hopefully, with a few months' practice, I'll be able to at least describe the basics of storytelling. And hopefully I'll be able to get some of my life together in the process.
Wish me luck.
Glad to hear you're working on yourself and for whatever it may be worth, all the things you mentioned is things you can learn. It takes work, sure, but it's not impossible.