Happy New Year to everyone out there (read: all 3 of you) that read my blog! Before you ask, no, my new year's resolution was not to play more go or get to a certain ranking. However, my resolution is extremely short, very convoluted, and may very well lend itself to go if that's the path that my mind takes. What's the resolution? It sounds so silly and simple that I won't divulge it here. :)

Now, on to the extremely belated entry, now with new subsections!

Go and Everyday Living

A lot of what I've learned from go has lended itself rather easily to my daily living experience. I thought I'd highlight a couple of them here to spread the wisdom and what not.

The Experience of Trying Something New: This is something that I've struggled with, and continue to struggle with on a daily basis. Learning go is something that I've thought about for a long time (2 years, if I recall correctly), and just started learning recently. This sudden decision to do so was actually in conjunction with other things in my life that were also sudden (moving out of my house and going across town with only a week's planning, for instance). It also allowed me to start thinking about doing new things and having new experiences. Everyone needs some of those now and again. :)

The Ability to Tenuki: This really helps in personal relations where I best not be involved, or situations in which I have no control. I'm still a youngin', prone to know people that are destined to have "create and propagate as much drama as possible" be one of the controlling mantras in their lives. It's quite sad that while I try and do positive things with my life (job, family, close friends, my hobbies, etc), there are some people that take it upon themselves to attack me for no clear reason at all except to see a reaction. This has happened a couple times recently, all from one person in particular, but I won't spread the unnecessary gossip to a go blog. Needless to say, I could have responded to each and every one of these, preparing a counter-argument for every single accusation and false statement, and played this needless fight across the board that was started with a weak and needless attack (it could even be called false sente). Why waste all of my stones (energy) when I could be doing something more productive? Herein comes tenuki. I simply play elsewhere. I play the biggest move on the board, be it concentrating on work, spending time with my friends and family, or deriving enjoyment and pride from my interests.

The Right to Lose: Everyone loses sometimes. Especially in go. You need to lose some to win some, and be defeated soundly to learn anything important. That doesn't mean you have to like being defeated, you just have to tolerate it.

New Beginners!

Between Cecilm[22k]  and myself, we've addicted three people to the game of go, and have interested at least four others. Once my new board and stones arrive (details when it arrives), we'll have two great boards to play on and several other smaller boards that people can play on. I'm attemping to start 'go parties' in my circle of friends, where a bunch of people just sit around and play go. We can play games and discuss problems and tsumego. It should be a lot of fun once I get around to organizing the first one. I'll let you know how it turns out!

New Year's was the first unofficial 'go party', since I urged people to bring their go boards to play some games in my upstairs loft bedroom. It became the runaway hit of the evening, with games going on until 4am on January 1st. Surely that much go addicted some of my friends even more. :)

Study, Study, Study

I've been doing more studying than playing lately. I've lost the drive to play online somewhat, but I'm reading through Davies' Life and Death currently, at the suggestion of nachtrabe[-]. I'm quite proud that I used the knowledge of that book recently, in where I saw and correctly reduced the territory of one of my opponent's groups into a rabbity six. It's a reassuring fact to me, especially when sometimes I have trouble translating go theory and problems into real-game situations consciously.

Playing More, Wolvie?

I plan to play more, I honestly mean that. Right now I feel stuck at where I am, hence the studying. I think that through studying, starting go parties (which literally means teaching beginners), and watching the occassional HnG, that I'll start playing more often and with more confidence.