Thank you very much Bill.

If you read Bill's notes again, you'll notice 99% of them are on basics. Very local, basic shapes and tesuji.
Bill is telling you something without explicitly saying it: it's still your basics,
not "general ideas and strategies" that are the most crucial right now.
The key word is "general" -- what you must work on now is very specific: local, basic shapes and tesuji.

Yes, but I like general ideas and strategies and they give me something fun to play with while playing out games and trying to work out the problems in my shapes and tesuji.

I'm fully aware that my basics are still the problem, it just keeps the game more interesting for me to think about the other stuff too.

I know. Go is so annoying.

Some comments on the Bzzz game.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

An even game with an EGF 6k. It was unfortunately cut short as the kids came home and disrupted it but it was a lost game for me anyway so I didn't mind resigning and having a rematch next time he was over. We think I missed a rather large kill on the bottom.



I was quite out of my depth in this game! I'd never played a fuseki like this one before for instance. But it was fun.

Thanks Ed.

So goals haven't been going to plan. I've been doing more playing and fewer tsumego (can't complain about this), real life has cut down on study/play time (can't complain about this, such is life with young children) and have been focused more on Get Strong at Tesuji and various Life and Death problems than Speed Baduk 7. I'm 260 problems into GSAT which is ok progress for a week without much time I think. I'm enjoying the problems a lot, it's fun looking for tesuji and I find myself doing it more often in my games. I've also been reading Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go and finding it very interesting. Also I've been reading a few chapters of Attack and Defence, it's mostly going over my head but it's giving some fun ideas to try out in games and giving me different ways to look at the game.

The main focus though is tesuji problems with some life and death for reading practice. I think this focus is paying dividends in my games. Most of all though I've been having a lot of fun which is the important part!


So new goals for this week:

Finish GSAT One and Two star problems. Work on Speed Baduk 7 and various Life and Death sources but no deadlines for these.
Read more of Attack and Defence and Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go (hopefully finishing the latter).
Play one serious game a day (preferably more, but as a minimum one game a day is a good fit for me at the moment).
I'm not going to set a rank goal. I think that would be counterproductive for me.

I'm low today, I think I'm going back into a depression (that I'm even thinking this based on one day's "data" is enough to point to a change in thinking in my mind which is usually a good indicator of bad places to be visited soon).

Ah well, what goes up must inevitably come down I guess. My mood lifted a bit at the club, though my concentration was shockingly poor. Now it's very low since I came home. Main focus now will be trying some of the approaches worked over with my psychologist about mindful observation of the mood change rather than trying to fight it as well as challenging some of the thought reactions to the change in mood. I need to learn to accept that my mood cycles up and down and find ways to live with it rather than fight it and end up in a worse state for it. Despite playing very poorly (imho) I'm going to try and keep meeting up with people in person for a game or two during the week outside of the club meetings. This kind of refusal to alter behaviour is important in depressions, if I start avoiding these meet-ups I'll be cutting one social link with the outside world away and that is a very bad idea. When I start stopping to meet up with people I start beating myself up over it and digging myself into an even deeper hole. So I must resist the seemingly rational urge to avoid people and isolate myself.

Anyway, part of my living with this is going to be finding ways to keep working away at projects while I'm low, so I'll continue with the tsumego as best I can. We'll see if I can maintain a half hour a day. Better to spend time trying to solve problems than ruminating on whatever negative scenarios my brain conjours up. Actually playing go will be a lot harder but I think I should try and do it and learn not to beat myself up (unreasonably) over the inevitable blunders that will happen.

Already I'm criticising myself in my head for this kind of post since it's not strictly go related, but maybe someone else with depression who plays go sees this and can find something to relate to in it and it helps to set these goals out on "paper" anyway to give me something to refer back to.

Between me being in a depression and my 2 year old daughter and 5 year old son having vomiting bugs and demanding all my attention, I've had no time for go the last while. No bad thing either as I feel I could do with a break.

In non-playing activities, I've organised a turn based tournament for our local club. This has started and looks like it'll be a lot of fun with plenty of trash talk going to be going on at our club meets for a few weeks!

Goals not achieved. I'm not feeling bad about this in the slightest, I had far more important things than Go to be dealing with this week between the kids and myself (I was in a very dark place there for a few days). Today is the first day of freedom for a while from the kids and I've been spending it so far catching up on reading I promised my psychologist that I'd do ("The Happiness Trap" by Russ Harris for those who are interested).

So, being in better (read: somewhat high and goal driven) form I'd decided to rework how I'm setting goals as I don't think I'm being very reasonable. I'm going to go back to aiming for a half hour minimum per day of tsumego and not worry about getting books finished or any of that. If I put the time in the books will take care of themselves. Breaking goals down into small steps works best for me I think, if I focus on end goals it just seems overwhelming which is doubly problematic when you get depressed a lot as I do.

(Go relevant stuff ends here, what follows is about me personally. Feel free to skip! )

As someone with bipolar (not Bipolar I) I'm struggling quite a bit with high versus low moods affecting self perception, concentration and goal setting. As I'm sure is obvious, when I'm high I feel like I must put a lot of effort into everything in my life, when I'm low I feel I can't put any effort in at all. Finding balance between these two extremes is tough and honestly I'm finding it rather difficult. I can already feel myself asking myself why I can't put X amount of hours into go, take up a new exercise program, start learning a new language (or two), start baking bread for myself again and get half a dozen projects off the ground around the house. This is after several days where I was struggling with suicidal ideation and any of the above were very far from my mind. If I get any higher, I hope I can come back and read this paragraph and knock some sense into my future self. I've been gaining tools to help with the low patches, I'm rather happy with how I dealt with the intrusive suicidal thoughts this time around (I was able to maintain control and see them as just thoughts brought up by my illness not beliefs or wishes that I rationally wanted), now this could be just a minor low or something, I'll have to talk to my psychiatrist about it but in the past I'd get very, very agitated and upset when these thoughts came and I'd work myself up into a state and end up needing to be watched until I calmed down. Anyway, I hope to achieve the same degree of insight into my thoughts when high. To stop the overspending (I've managed this fairly well since my last hospitalisation with strict budgeting), excessive goal setting, excessive project undertaking and so on. So I'll be trying to keep myself in-line with my go activities and I'll be using this journal as a tool for that by continuously reinforcing the need for moderation in it. I want to be able to set goals and not go overboard about it!

Anyway, I hope that paragraph was interesting to at least one person.

Interesting to me! very honest and insightful

Thank you, unfortunately I called it wrong and it was only a temporary relief from the depression.

High as a kite (can't sleep, paced for 4 hours because I couldn't sit down for longer than a few minutes, happier than I've ever been etc). So I'm studiously avoiding online go right now as I'd just get giddy and start making funny moves or something equally stupid. I hope to still play with friends who can tolerate me like this but I won't inflict this kind of giddiness on strangers, it's not fair on them. I say this now while I still have enough insight that it might stick! Seeing my psychiatrist on Thursday, psych hospital may once again be in my future, we'll see.

I won't be updating this for a while and I won't be playing much go for a while either. If I'm not doing better in a week on new medication, I'll be heading back to psychiatric hospital until I stabilise.

We look forward to your return.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Despite not having interacted with you much on this forum, I sincerely hope that everything works out for you.

Thank you, everything will be fine, it's just another episode, worst case scenario is that I get psychotic and need to be hospitalised for a few months. Either way, I should be fine by the Autumn at worst, if things follow the pattern they usually follow with me.