Ceding your queen - hubris at it's finest. When I was a kid my dad taught me to play chess. I rarely beat him but later on could take most of the high school kids. I never played more than one or two moves ahead, just tried to feel it. Whenever I met anyone who knew patterns, or studied it, or knew what the hell a gambit was, they'd kick my ass. But I could destroy some novices. So when I was teaching someone else to play I'd just cede the queen and then punk them out.

Once I was at a party- like back more than a decade ago, and someone called me out. We drank, and I beat them. Then his buddy challenged me. It went in the sequence of- have a drink, play a game. The drunker I got the less I looked ahead and the easier it got. I got 5 wins and cleaned the house and got loud-asshole drunk. Then the last dude at the party sat down. He was ranked like 700-something in the world. I could tell in 4 moves that this dude knew the game on a level I would never grasp. I could see that I was fucked unrecoverably already, and I learned more dodging that guy and playing for a draw than in any other game before or since. I didn't get the draw, I lost.

So I have worked with vector graphics since the first layout programs in the world, but I never learned flash. I stopped writing programs when the projects got to complex to knock out in the last night before they were due. I grew up playing with lead type (it's fun to melt!) - and collect story ideas but never write. I started a small business in the most bloody simpleminded fashion possible - I just opened the doors and winged it.

For the past decade I haven't done much but survive and try to get my balance. When I look behind me I see a trail of unforced errors and laziness. But I also see a number of excellent internalized lessons.

I guess the point is: maybe at this point, a little more planning and foresight is required, not just trying to work with the moment and feel the flows.