Overdrive: Path to Mediocracy

As I state on my profile page, my late father taught me Chess when I was on my first decade in life. I then found other distractions, such as other boardgames and computers, and didn't play for over twenty years.

This means that (A) my skill-level is at where it was when I was nine-ish, and (B)it has gathered two decades of rust. In other words I suck. How do I fix this?

Well, that's "easy" - I play more! I have played mostly online Chess here at Chess.com, and have in my matches so far plunged from the initial 1200 rating to 891, where I actually feel I belong right now... I do not, however, hope to remain here. My goal at first is to make it back up to 1200 as soon as possible.

Where have I gone wrong? ...besides taking a twenty-odd-year break in playing the game, that is... I think one thing is I got over-eager when I joined this magnificent site. I was so keen to play more games that I joined some tournaments. Too many of them, resulting in too many simultaneous games going on.

At some point I had closer to 30 current matches at the same time. Now, to somebody who's good at the game, that number might not sound like a great lot. To me it's overwhelming. I can't remember my long-term plans, so I end up just playing the board as it stands, especially when I log in and find it's my move in 27 games and I'm in a hurry...

I think I should play more Live Chess. That way I get to concentrate on one game from beginning to end and get to actually see the game develop without day-long breaks between turns. Online Chess is really fun as well, but I think I should confine myself to one tournament at the time, and at most 5-10 current matches.