L
osing streaks are no fun at all. It doesn't really matter what the game is -- if you play it a lot, sometimes it will feel like you've forgotten everything you used to know about it. You can think back and remember those days when it felt easy, when everything you were supposed to do felt easy and obvious, when your opponents just seemed to make mistakes left and right, and you took advantage of them with confident dexterity. Then you start losing, and you just don't know why. You feel present, you seem to be thinking about everything relevant; but your actions are clumsy, and your strategies weak, and players you know to be inferior just seem to strike unerringly all of a sudden. It can all feel a bit bewildering.
Perservering through these periods is no easy task, and when you do make it through them, it's often not clear what happened to get you back to your old self. Sometimes you have to take a break, sometimes you just play through it until something changes, sometimes you have to study or think about the game for a while. Sometimes a while...is a while.
Obviously, I'm on a losing streak right now. It's not the worst I've ever been in, but I feel like a schlub when playing Go these days. Aw well, it's happened before and it'll happen again -- what I like about it right now is that I don't feel all that bad about it. I'm trying to get more sanguine about these things. Trying to cultivate a better mindset toward such low and earthly things as iOS Go App player ranking boards. What really matters is that my brother helped E---- and I move our bedroom downstairs, and we're thrilled about it. Now the upstairs is basically a wasteland, but we'll fill it with kids soon enough.