Road to 1800 day 12

Hi! I’m JM. (Surely someone has read those words before and if you haven’t you can read 11 days of posts right now! If you’ve read them before, why not re-read?) I have exactly 88 days to hit 1800.  Today I did zero puzzles and instead played a bunch of games and tried to chat like a renaissance man. With the odd Taylor Swift reference. “My brother in arms, whatever blood shalt be spilt please know it is not "bad blood" for we doth not have problems.”  It was a lot more fun. I don’t think I played any better or worse but I enjoyed it so much more! When I lost games I wasn’t mad, I thanked my opponent for the honor of losing to such a valiant foe.  When I was a move away from winning a game I offered my opponent a draw saying: “We can settle this peacefully now. Blood not needless be shed. Take this peace offering and I only beg that in your next encounter you pay forward this favor.” Luckily, they declined. Which was nice because I’m still really struggling with winning games as black. 

My speech is not my fault. It is, of course, my uncle’s.  He gave me a book called The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini a hilarious book about this 15th century Italian goldsmith and sculptor who goes around making the most incredible works of art, insulting noblemen, murdering someone for hurting his pride, fleeing Rome, realizing he likes Rome, goes back to Rome, gets arrested escapes and now he is hanging out in France where he’s stopped the murdering thing for now and instead pissing off counts and having the queen conspire against him while the king showers him with riches because he’s clearly pretty good at his job. The book is great! But if we come across each other and I humbly beseech you to consider peace  please understand it is entirely my uncle’s fault. 

Anyway if you’re reading this, reach out and say hi! I’m so curious about who the hell is willfully spending their time reading this! I can’t bite! (And I wouldn’t.)

So I have some emails I need to write to reach out to some former professors and maybe ask for references in the future. Chess has been a great way to put that off but now I’m out of characters (exactly 1800 every day btw) and so I must write the emails! 

See ya!--JM