The Impact of Tactics

Tactics. They say if you want improvement, you need to study tactics. You must understand the raw mechanics of the game. It's amazing how long I didn't take this advice to heart. Years. When I started playing chess, openings and opening theory was what captivated me into the game. I loved how every person could play their own way and achieve the same goals and successes. I enjoyed how it all flowed and how every opening had its own essence per se. When it came to my playing ability however, this was more of a hinderance than a help. Endgames I found pretty boring, but they felt at least somewhat similar to the openings in some ways. However, there was one thing I hated more than anything else; tactics. They felt so otherworldy to me. I liked watching how the board evolved from a starting position to a middlegame fight, not jumping into said fight and finding a combination. This greatly hurt my game. I adjusted to this by shying away from any tactical fighting openings. I tried to play as solidly as possible avoiding tactical fights I knew I would lose. It hurt me as a player, but I managed. I played in this passive fashion for years, playing solid Queens Gambits, Slavs, and Caro kann's. I achieved moderate success, getting up to the 1600's or so without tactical fights, positionally grinding every game. Maybe I just didn't have the attention span for it I reasoned. Or maybe, more likely, I feared losing. I feared trying and failing, getting that experience and learning from my mistakes. I played passively so as to not induce risk, but in doing so completely poisoned my development as a player. I was sheltering myself. The only way I could play chess was off raw instinct. But something felt wrong. I couldn't get much further without being aggressive. Recently I took a big leap in my development. I decided to give tactics a try. Right away I noticed an improvement in my game, leaping from 1600 to 1700's. It felt like I hit a sort of nirvana where my positional instinct and some tactical ability combined and I played strong. Then, it stopped. My games..... have changed. I start looking for tactics in my games but in doing so I lose to the dumbest mistakes. I hang pieces... that's something that hasn't regularly happened in years. It's weird, the few games I win are complete tactical murder. My many losses are either hanging pieces or losing on time trying desperately to find a winning combination. My rating is plunging, going from the 1700s to the 1600s and I even hit the 1500s. I'm still doing 30 minutes of tactics every day, but with all these losses I can't help but feel like I'm regressing rather than progressing. Am I just not suited towards playing strong tactical games? Or is this me finally taking my  necessary beatings that I ran away from when I was a beginner? My chess pride is highly damaged, but I nevertheless proceed for some reason. I just don't know whether I'm doing more harm than good. I'd like to believe that my losses are my way of breaking free from my shell that would wall me off at 1600 forever, but I can't see the light per se. 

hahaha donkey want to play chess