I think I'm (finally) getting better

Up until a few weeks ago, my games were really hit-or-miss. Sometimes I would amaze myself by how incredible I can be at times; other times, I amazed myself by how stupid I can be.

Unfortunately, those moments of "why the heck I do that?" occurred very often, and even then my wins were mostly from sheer luck because my opponent did something dumb. And whenever I managed to rack up quite a few wins, it would be followed by several embarrassing defeats.

As of late, however, it seems that I'm finally moving towards being better. I managed to get a nice winning streak after a long hiatus; as short-lived as it was, it gave me quite a bit of motivation, especially because one of those games contains my first intentional brilliant move. And unlike all the other times, I did not proceed to lose a whole bunch of games in a row. (I lost two, won one, then lost again.)

Now, I'm doing pretty well once again, and I can see that I'm not always sitting there like "please do something dumb, please do something dumb..." or trying obvious bait moves when I'm not doing so well and getting frustrated when my opponents don't fall for them.

My accuracy and awareness are both improving greatly; I'm not falling for obvious tricks and traps nearly as often, and I'm understanding what traps are actually serious and should be avoided, along with which ones are just silly and not helping my opponent; additionally, I've had a couple of winning games where I didn't play any particularly bad moves and was dominating the whole way through.

And most importantly, my biggest weakness — opponents who play extremely aggressively in an attempt to overwhelm you by sheer brute force — is starting to go away a bit.

I definitely have a long way to go still, but it's so refreshing to see that my hard work is slowly starting to pay off at last.

Never Give Up! 

Well done

For us mere mortals chess development can be a slow process (and not linear - even when we are progressing there will be set-backs). Keep up the good work.