this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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Asklemmy
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Two things: chess and piano. I downloaded the chess.com app and play whenever I'm idling for more than a few minutes. Got to a very proficient respectable level in a few months, and it's a ton of fun, endless combinations, no upper limit to how good you can get.
I also bought a cheap keyboard for under $300 and got proficient at it within a few months. Half hour here, twenty minutes there, an hour there. I'm not Chopin or anything and I can barely even play him but again, respectable.
So now if you ever go somewhere and see a chess set or a piano you can be like hey I know what to do with that!
for a second I thought I was on /c/mechanicalkeyboards and thought "omg i wouldn't say that's cheap"
Oh I just meant cheap relative to like a grand piano or something. I don't mean to be insensitive, I'm doing pretty well financially, so to me $300 for decent quality but still entry level equipment isn't really a huge investment, especially for something I could return if it doesn't go well.
Also thinking about buying a 6" telescope like this bad boy right here
Again in the $300 range, entry level but still good value.
One lesson I've taken away from it is that playing good chess is much less about coming up with astonishing brilliant moves than I thought. It's more about making good decisions, positioning yourself well, and continuously applying pressure. If you keep doing that you will have good results most of the time. Great life lesson, hit me in the face like a ton of metaphors when I realized that.
You should! My grandfather figure taught me how to play chess, I look back on the time we spent together fondly
Brain fog is real, definitely not talked about enough! One of the worst things to come out of being depressed and then being on SSRIs is that I struggle to read these days. I love reading but I don't have much brainpower left to take things in anymore
Chopin does have pieces that aren't too bad, though of course few if any for beginners.
I've had no formal piano training (and my main instrument is guitar) yet can play several pretty well. Nocturne Op 9 No 2 for example is both beautiful and not too difficult.
Valse Op. 69 No 2 is harder but still doable.
Waltz Op 64 No 2 is probably harder still but with practice not as bad as it looks -- but it is likely the most difficult piece that I can play without skipping any parts. Really fun to play since it's at my edge at my ability and it feels amazing to pull it off when I feel it should be much too hard to my skill level.
Hey dude hope I'm not stepping your toes but if you are here on Lemmy you may be interested in lichess.
It is a free and open source alternative to play some good chess. It is also very active and there are all kinds of levels of players so you wouldn't be losing anything from switching :)