I started playing and studying chess at the end of 2020. Since then I never took a break from studying for more than a week. Usually when I went on a family vacation would force me to stop studying, or at least slow down.
Then came the other passion in my life… Zelda. In the middle of May I started playing the latest Nintendo Switch game and it was all-consuming. In the back of my mind was always chess, but saving Hyrule was always more important.
My April 2023 Recap and May Study Plan was thrown out the window. I didn’t even create a study plan for June, because I knew I wouldn’t stick to it. All I did was a little bit of opening review on Chessable every day and played a few blitz games. I stopped posting on Twitter, I stopped watching videos, I stopped puzzles. I probably did only 5-10% as much chess as I had been doing. This has been going on for about 6 weeks.
I’m not sure exactly how I feel about it. I felt guilty at first, because I was breaking the habits that I had built up over two years. On the other hand, I was getting a bit burnt out, so taking a break was a nice distraction.
Now I’m getting excited about chess again. I decided to create 3-month goals since the 1-month goals were not really goals and more of a list of things to do. I have some more vacation coming up, but after that I think I’ll be ready to jump back into chess full force!