life littlest victories

I have been obsessively playing Minesweeper for almost a week now. It is a fixation that I fall in and out of. I played at the beginner and intermediate levels and recently been banging my head against the expert level. It's a 16x30 grid with 99 bombs.

This is not a pastime I would necessarily recommend. I have been spending a lot of time getting blown up which is discouraging.

When I play, sometimes I tell myself that it is an analogy for life or at the very least, my job. I hope that none of you has a situation in your life, the experience of which could be modeled or mirrored by Minesweeper.

The pace of the game allows a mind too much time to fret about things that are not game related which is distracting and makes one more likely to make a mistake.

Mistakes often made:

I click without thinking.

I don't pay attention to the whole board and I overlook available information.

I don't think out possible scenarios or become enamored of one possible solution and neglect to sketch out all the others.

I make false assumptions.

I make decisions based on previous games instead of focusing on the game in play.

I accidentally click on a spot that I intend to flag.

Sometimes I lack motor control. My fingers revolt and disregard the instructions sent by my brain.

Sometimes there are two configurations that will work, based on the information available and I pick wrong.

I generally tell myself that if I get down to 30 or fewer bombs on the grid, I am doing well. A few times I have gotten down to 4-10 of them.

But today, I won.



Yup. It was a pretty straightforward board. Not so ambiguous. Maybe I got lucky. Maybe I have finally learned something.

I am tempted to quit playing forever. But if I do where is the reinforcement for possible lessons learned? I might just take a break and play again later.