Personal Log 5.9.21

Since I've been working some very long hours w/ various & sundry jobs/projects I thought I'd take a minute & upload some blogs that I've been sandbagging “for such a time as this”; here's one from sometime last year or the year before, I can't remember…

The Gaming Gestation

For the last 7 – 10 years the Lord has been speaking to me about being more social. I'm not a social person, that's not really my personality. I have three brothers & growing up, I was always the odd-man-out; they were athletic, I was academic. They'd be playing darts, I'd be reading the dictionary; that's just the way it was. I mean I tried, I was just not that good at sports, it took me a long time to get into sports & by that time my brothers were graduating, going to college or getting married & starting families of their own.

When we were younger though, every Saturday night we played cards. It didn't matter what game it was, we played it. Now, Michigan Rummy was “our” game, we played that for hours on end (still do) but we did manage to fit in others: Poker, Black Jack, 7 Card Stud, etc & we got pretty good at them, myself included (much to my surprise!).

That was a pretty good foundation for helping to shape my social skills & as I've stated before, I'm not naturally sociable, I'm really quite shy & I don't mind keeping to myself but God did create us to be social people & when He speaks to you about something, He also makes a way.

So, for the last 7 years in my spare time (about 5 – 10 minutes per day) I've been learning some classic games that I've always wanted to learn. I started off w/ Backgammon, a game I always thought was stupid but once I got the hang of it, I liked it & found it challenging. I went onto other games such as Hearts (a personal favorite), Spades, Rummy (another personal favorite), Gin Rummy & Cribbage. Even though Euchre is huge in this area I despise it & will not contribute to it's advancement. Corn Hole is also huge here & though I also do not like it I can play it but I also learned how to play Bocce.

To wrap this up, the last few years I've been laying the foundation for being more social by learning more games in my spare time. Recently, I've discovered that my church secretary & her husband play... Bocce. I've discovered that the favorite game of the leader of our Men's Group is... Spades. I've also discovered there are Backgammon Clubs in my area that will resume when this is all over...

The wider your foundation is, the higher & deeper you can go, it's macro = it applies to everything. The more games I know, the more I can connect w/ people who play those games, whenever & wherever I may meet them without the barrier of a learning curve; I can meet them where they're at & in some way “become all things to all men”, 

When this pandemic is over, people will once again be getting together in person & by then, I'll be ready because I've been preparing.