Giving up chess

About eight or ten years ago I started running as a hobby. At first it was actually just walking until eventually that wasn't challenging enough so I started jogging. I went longer distances. I signed up for 5K races, trail runs, and a half-marathon. After several years I even completed a marathon. I branched out into triathlon, adding swimming and bicycling to my training routine. I was way into it.

Then I got bored. In what seems like a very short time I lost my enthusiasm for all that training. I stopped getting faster and instead went the other way, and it took a lot more effort just to complete my regular workouts. At one point it was a lot of work but also a lot of fun. The work remained but the fun went away. My training became less regular, and whenever I would take a break I would lose fitness which made it even harder to get back to where I had been.

So I gave it up, and reacquainted myself with chess instead. I still run and bike a little bit, but only because I need the exercise for my physical and especially mental health. I do enough to get through a workout a couple of times a week but that's it.

I wonder if the same thing will happen with chess. If you read the introductory entry to this blog you know that I've stopped playing chess a number of times only to take it up again years later, so it wouldn't be unprecedented as far as my personal history. One of the reasons I've given it up in the past is the same reason I gave up on my fitness kick: I wasn't getting any better. I worry about that. It seems to me that inevitably I will reach a point in chess where I won't improve, and the only question is whether I'm at or near that point or not. If I feel like I'm at that point I think it will be difficult for me to enjoy playing, or more specifically studying, and unlike running or bicycling which have significant health benefits, I don't see any reason to do the work of studying chess if I'm not enjoying myself. I'll probably just put the chess stuff away in a drawer somewhere and find something else to do.

I don't want that to happen. Every time I've come back to chess, I lament the fact that I let years go by that I could have been using to get better, and oh, how much better a player I would be now if only I hadn't played zero chess for the past five years!

But I suppose that's what everybody says about everything. We could all be a lot better at something if only we devoted all our time to it and never did anything else. At least in my case that's just not how life works. I get bored. Even when I'm completely into chess I still have other things to do. I run. I read books. I follow sports on TV. I work. I have family time. When chess interferes too much with all those other things it's a problem.

Will this happen? Will chess interfere too much with the rest of my life? Will I get fed up because I stop improving? Will I give up the game yet again? I don't know. I hope I don't, but if I do it will be because I decided that's what's best for me at that moment. It's the kind of choice everyone has to make, every day. Chess is a part of my life, but it is not my life.