Off the beaten path
A few a weeks ago I went up to Cloudland canyon state park to do some trail running. I've been to Cloudland state park before but on my last trip there I didn't have a chance to do the West rim trail. https://www.atlantatrails.com/hiking-trails/cloudland-canyon-hiking-west-rim-loop-trail/ So the purpose of this recent trip was to do the West rim trail. I decided to run it.....well at least some of it.
.............Something what often happens when I run on a trail I never been on before is that I take a wrong turn somewhere and end up somewhere I didn't really intend to go. I am usually happy it happens since it can lead to interesting experiences......like encountering the above rock formations. In this case it took me a while to figure out that I was on a side trail. It was only after the trail started to get quite rugged that I decided to turn around. I was also getting a little concerned that I might encounter a bear if I continued the journey, so I went back and found the main trail and the views there are more typical of what you might find at Cloudland Canyon. Here is my favorite picture I took from the main trail.
I've been thinking how I can relate all this to chess. I think what I can say is that I'm not really where I expected to be on the chess trail. I am still grinding away at studying endgames ,but although I am making progress, it is a lot slower going now than when I first started. I am still hoping to finish the book by the end of the year but I am only about 90 pages deep with about 250 pages to go. Another thing in the back of my mind is that I want to do enough work on chess to expect to have a good result before I play in another OTB tournament. I'm not sure if I have done enough work yet. On the other hand I may get to the point where I'll just want to play to play....not caring so much about the result. Even this can be difficult to manage though. There are tournaments to play in in my area all the time, so the problem isn't really opportunity to play.....it's more that most of the time there are other things I'd really rather be doing on the weekend than playing chess.......hiking, march madness, baseball, ect. This is also kind of weird to me since I spend so much time studying chess.......well I'll probably play at some point.....just not sure when. Originally I was intending to wait until I finish this endgame book but that may take too long......so stay tuned I guess.
