500 Words — Day Six: Short on Time
One of the worst feelings in the world is feeling the pressure to perform some activity under the pressure of time. Like me, right now. Instead of writing whatever was on my mind, I decided that I need to go on a nine game winning streak against some poor bloke in bullet chess.
I’m not particularly good at chess, but this guy was probably a couple rungs lower than me. But, he kept challenging me after each loss and how could I deny this guy a chance at redemption? The first six or seven games were absolute blowouts. Basically me hunting his queen and just blitzing the poor guy the rest of the way until he resigned. The one thing about bullet games is that you shouldn’t use bad openings and this guy was really creative about violating the basic chess principles (controlling center of the board, getting your pieces out, not moving the same piece two or three times in a row) at the start. Anyways, the last couple of games he figures out how to start a little better and finally trades queens while still even in material. I’ve won nine games in a row, and now that pesky queen is finally out of his way. Anyways, after a few more trades and what not, I have a two pawn lead, and we both have a rook and bishop. Me, used to domination instead of slight lead decides to blunder away the bishop. After some pawn hunting, I have a rook and pawn to his rook and bishop. I’m trying really hard to hold onto this pawn without making a mistake and … I run out of time. So, the nine game win streak ended and our poor challenger finally redeems himself. The game probably should have ended in a tie given the positioning of the pieces, but in bullet chess, time neutralizes most ties.
What was the point of that story? There really wasn’t one, but that’s what I was doing instead of writing today. So there’s a quick recap of my chess career. As of this writing I have 1107 wins and 1081 losses in Bullet chess. Only 97 ties. Again, time pressure neutralizes most ties.
Pretty much this whole day, I have been feeling short on time. I woke up at 6 for my morning run and knew I had a long day ahead of me. At work, time pressure is always present. The schedule is tight and obstacles continue to present themselves without any resolution. The worst part is when you have no time but you stuck waiting for someone or something to get figured out before you can actually start making progress on the time limited task. So you’re stuck waiting and yet timing is slowly running out. Perhaps, those on the other side of the obstacles are weighing their options, hoping not to make a bad move. Unfortunately for me, this isn’t bullet chess and I don’t win if they run out the clock. I lose. So that’s fun, I guess.
Had a couple of conversations outside of work that pushed out the end of the workday. How responsible of me, working my full hours and not counting my phone calls with recruiters hoping to poach me away from my current position. Thinking about it, that was probably the right thing to do. So I end up working until 6:30 and I not going to write right after dinner, so after a moment to relax it’s 8:30 and I haven’t played chess yet today. How tempting! Only 3 bullet games, I think, then I promise I’ll write. Just 3 games. 10 games later and here I am, writing about poor time management and chess. But hey, we made to end of this post, didn’t we?
