A year in Chess as a 50+ adult learner.

I started playing on 5/25/21 as a complete novice rated a 1000 and quickly fell to my real level and low in the 500s.  I had last played chess about 4 decades prior to that and never competitively.  My knowledge was basically - this is how the horsey moves.  I didn't know what a tactic even was.  

Very slowly, I started to learn a bit here or there.  I'm sure I blundered about a billion times - a lot of early improvement was just - not blundering every move, and seeing when my opponents blundered so I could actually capitalize on that.  

Then I started to learn something about tactics, how to use pins and skewers and double attacks and discovered attacks, etc. to solve problems.  I still had atrociously awful board vision - but bit by bit I added to my knowledge.  Watched some YouTubers (mostly Levy and Naroditsky, but sometimes others) to learn other aspects of the game that completely eluded me.  Started learning some openings, how to play the middle game, etc.  

I started to climb the rating pretty quickly.  At that time I thought I could get to 1500 in a year.  Well that didn't happen.  But I did make it to 1300!  And fee pretty good about that.  Unfortunately progress has plateaued quite a bit and going from 1200 - 1300 was a slog with a lot of back tracking.  

I'm constantly amazed any the levels of the game and how much there is to learn.  Every time I think I have something mastered, I learn there's another gear, and then another gear, and then another gear. . .even though I am infinitely better than I was a year ago, I am so humbled by players decades younger than me with just incredible command of the game that I'll never posses.  

I'm not sure where from here - I think if I get to around 1500 I'll probably reach my natural apex.  I'd love to get to that sometime in 2022.  I doubt I'll be able to get further than that.  The skill of players in that range is really something to watch.  

Anyway - been a fun year to learn something about this game.