Getting better at the game

I've played hundreds of thousands of games.  Almost all of them have been Blitz games.  I should be good by now but I am not.  I look at my chess rating and I wonder why I still bother to play sometimes.  But I'm not giving up!  I've noticed a reaccuring pattern in my games.  Oftentimes I find nothing to do, and end up losing because I really am not doing much of anything.  Also, I lose a lot in the opening game.  I mainly play over the board and hardly use chess.com, but I think it's time to diversafy the type of people I play against and play on chess.com so I learn how to play people with a lot of different styles.  Also, I think I need to shift my focus from 3 minute chess to 5 minutes as I need more time to think than that usually.  So after a long walk in the park the idea for me to get better is mainly to play here on chess.com more 5 minute blitz, and read a lot of opening books!  :), while not forgetting to do tactics everyday!  Without tactics, I will never go from doing nothing but mindless moves in the middle game to developing traps for my opponents.

One can get lost in chess literature!  Wheither to spend your time analysing your own games or the games of Masters... or to read books!

Pawn Structure Chess is the book for me; by Andrew Soltis.  It of course teaches the basic concepts to be thinking about when confronting various pawn structures, thus a good book if one wants to learn how to use pawn structure to your advantage.  

303 Tricky Chess Tactics is the tactics book I am going over now.  

I've strayed from reading the pawn structure book because I've come into the possession of really good opening rephretore books, however, I still think this book is the first book I should read, the others are just gravy.  I do not think it is the intention of the author for us to memorize the games in this book, but to learn the ideas behind those moves and the standard replies to different pawn structures.  If I go over all the books I have I should improve my rating :).