Old Regrets

We all have things in our lives that didn't work out. Missed connections, failed aspirations - they define us more clearly than maybe anything else.

I have a lot of regrets. I'm no looker, nor am I skilled or charming or friendly. I'll probably never have a family of my own; I prefer solitude to most forms of socializing. I've been traumatized here and there, mostly by my own blindness and poor choices.

I don't have much in the bank, though I dreamed in greener days of being rich. I buy books and training materials; I spend my time reading and browsing the Web and training martial arts. I'm not a gifted programmer or speaker. I wanted to learn the saxophone but I never had a chance to. Motivation is a huge challenge for me. I've let down countless people, and I've turned my back on so many other things I initially had such enthusiasm for.

It's a blow when you realize how much of a flake you are. My Mind is a Flake, not a Fist.

Not yet a fist, anyway.

I write this because just this week I decided to come back to one of the things I used to enjoy but stopped: Yomi is a game by David Sirlin, whose blog you can check out on the right side of this page. Yomi is a game about valuation and reading; you exploit the tendency of players in choosing specific moves, and you ground this in moment-to-moment evaluation of the game state. It's a very interesting mental exercise and it really helps me reach the state Robert Greene wrote of as "Negative Capability" - being able to function in a situation that has uncertainty without grasping obsessively for a way out of the uncertainty.

The game was completely free in the beta stages last year, but after the payment scheme went into effect I only got around to getting my favorite character this week. It's small, but I want to reverse at least some of the regrets I have. It's a commitment, for me to take back what I gave up.

I want to end up like the lady in the photo above - you can feel how the life behind that face was well-lived, can't you?