Hello everybody.
On the 5th of August 2020, I officially announced my retirement from tournament chess. The reason was that I wanted to pursue a carrier as an English as a second language (ESL) teacher. This thought was originally motivated by the fact that I had started to learn Brazilian Portuguese while I was working for a charity shop which at the time had 2 Brazilian managers. The head manager decided to make an advertisement in a magazine to encourage people to call me language exchange and English lessons. He believed that I would one day find love through this journey. As much as I looked forward to the challenge of helping people with their English (and practicing my Portuguese at the same time).
However, this journey came with some major difficulties from the very beginning. Firstly, I had no prior experience in teaching anybody. Secondly, I had to travel to far-away places in London which would involve long and awkward train journeys which at one point saw me have to wake up a 5 o'clock in the morning for a 22 stop underground journey. I needed headphones and Spotify to on my android phone to help me cope with the crowds at the station and the rumbling noises of the underground train. Thirdly, I have had to do this virtually without anybody on my side to give me guidance or advice about how to do the job properly. Essentially this was a lone journey where I had to do everything by myself.
I went to different parts of London to see different members of London's Brazilian community and then... suddenly... the pandemic happened. Lockdown of the UK was announced in March 2020 as the world was gripped by the effects of the Coronavirus outbreak which meant that all but necessary travel was banned in order to keep the public safe. Therefore, virtual measures had to take place for me to take language exchange sessions and English classes. I downloaded Skype and Zoom on my laptop and had various sessions with different people. During the same period, I was looking for a personal Portuguese teacher. I saw an advertisement in the same magazine that my advertisement was in, saying 'Learn Brazilian Portuguese'. I emailed the teacher about my interest in working with her as a student of the language. We agreed to meet at a certain time of the week. 3 O'clock on Friday on Skype. So I arrived at my laptop at 3 O'clock of Friday as we agreed by email ... or so I thought. after many attempts to video call her by Skype, I decided to phone her. complaining in Portuguese about the one hour wait that I had. Then she angrily replied in English that I did not confirm the date and time of the class and even claimed to give me an email, asking for confirmation. (which I didn't see.) In the end, she said that maybe she is not the right teacher for me and therefore, terminated or relationship. This would prove to be one of many fallouts that I would have throughout this journey.
I also seemed to have many miscommunications with other people who contacted my service. Some wanted English lessons, some wanted language exchange and I wasn't always sure what the person wanted. These moments really destroyed my confidence as I felt like I was desperately letting them down. There were many moments when I asked myself "What did I do wrong?". I got the awful feeling that luck was simply not on my side when it comes to working with other people.
Then, come the start of 2021, my family got upset with me after I made a post , giving possible reasons why I have not been able to find a girlfriend on Facebook. I had demands from my family to delete the post, even though the post had absolutely nothing to do with them. To this day, I still scratch my head about what the fuss was about. I got into trouble with my family again in July 2021 when I wrote a blog about how my family can better support me. Once again, they were offended by the post and demanded for it to be deleted. It is obvious to me that my family does not want to know about my life desire, nor do they want to know about my ambitions.
One thing that I have known for a ling time is that people with Asperger Syndrome seem to have a much harder time making and maintaining relationships with other people. No doubt that I have experience this in so many ways in the last 2 years.
There has been a handful of moments in my life where I thought that I can get something out there that is somehow 'better' than chess. As you can see from the stories above, that has proven to be just a big illusion. No matter what happens to me in life, I will always love the game of chess and I will always have the game o chess in my life. It's simply what I do when the worst comes to the worst in life. Quite simply for me, Chess IS life. It's my past, my present and my future.
Hence, I will be making a return to over-the-board chess at some point. However, the return will not be an immediate one as I plan to start a ESL training and accounting courses before returning to the real life 64 square battlefield full-time.
Moral of the story is this. Never leave your biggest passion in life. You never know when you might need it.
Thank you for reading.
