Sunday, September 05, 2010

I Am The Sum Of My Endeavors

And right now, my endeavors are play-oriented with one lightning-from-blue-sky caveat.
Mainly I'm having fun with Bejeweled Blitz. So here's a few life lessons from the game:
  • Don't always take the easiest path; it seems easier but you have to work twice as fast and your score will never be as high as when you think things through. Investment/Return.
  • On the other hand, don't overcomplicate things because you'll waste valuable time in planning, not execution.
  • Avoid getting caught up in your own glory when you're ahead; that moment of arrogance can cost you the critical connection that results in a windfall of combos.
  • When you start a new game, take a look around; that first few seconds of assessment will save you floundering later.
  • Make sure you cover all of the board that you can - working one area dry is at first too easy (see #1) and then too hard as you get stuck in one place.
  • Further, avoid becoming too obsessed about making a particular match since you could pass up on even better matches as you struggle to make that one combo happen.
  • If your hand slips and you move the wrong gem, don't brood about it - that's a waste of perfectly good time and that mistake could actually create an even better combo.
  • Never give up the game, no matter how bad it seems; there's more than one way to win (coins & badges), but there's only one way to lose.
  • Once you've gotten a few good combos, don't think the rest of the game will just come naturally; you may have to fight even harder to make connections for a bit but the diligence always pays off.
  • Give yourself a good mix of easy matches and strategy; keep going and watch out for those sweet opportunities that can push you to the next level.

But that opportunity thing happened - I was just wandering around the local community college website and stumbled across a grant that I spontaneously applied for and then...received. Eeep! Exciting stuff and a bit daunting as my path is once again laid out for me in the coming months. However, it's Energy Management and all about sustainability without compromising technological standards with a vein of physics yumminess. So I'm looking forward to it and wondering just how crazy I am to get into another new round of school with 60+ hours at the clinic.

Yet it's all about the experiences, right? Any time that I don't have something planned, I squander my free time anyway. So I might as well push the envelope and try to accomplish what I can with the time I have. There's just a tiny spark of hope that this could mean that I do something that has an impact; what a pretty little flame that could be...