MY REVIEW OF 2021

HEALTH

As I write this document, I am  currently going through one of the worst health spells of my life. For a little over a year now, I have experienced some of he worst asthma of my life. The symptoms were first present in mid- November 2020 after suffering flu symptoms. The asthma has become so debilitating that I have felt very restricted in my everyday activities. There are day where I can barely walk without sweating an feeling breathless. It has lead to me seeing my GP on numerous occasions about my strong and ongoing asthma symptoms. There is now speculations that it can be more than asthma going on in my lungs. Lung conditions including Bronchitis have been thought of to why I continuously have breathing problems throughout the day. We wont know until March 2022 earliest as that is when my spirometry test is due to happen. Until then, I just have to do my best to survive in these trying times.

FAMILY

Family life has been very difficult for me this year with various misunderstandings about certain things the I posted on my personal Facebook account over the reasons for me being unable to find a romantic partner. To this day, I still do not understand why my mother and family  are so upset about me posting my thoughts about why I cannot get a girlfriend.  I can only think that family pride is to blame for this perception.

On 13th of July, I published a blog about what I would like to see more of in my family, which I later posted a link of in my personal Facebook account. The blog was simply about how my family can better support me. This lead to not only a fallout with my mother but also a fallout with my younger sister. My sister thought that I cared about Facebook more than I did about my family but this was simply a misperception of the situation. I actually wrote that blog because I actually do care about my family and I wanted to help them help me in a better way. My sister never understood this and eventually pushed my away saying: "If you don care, than I don't care 

Thankfully, after a handful of conversations, my mother and I have come to an agreement on certain thing like how to get a date and the things that my mother can an cannot do for me.

Throughout my whole life, I have always struggled to have the confidence to talk to my family directly as I have found myself in too many painful fallouts which have preciously lead to a shutdowns in communication and even fights.

Thanks to the help and support that I have received from over-the-phone counselling, I have gained a lot more confidence in verbal communication than I have had previously. That leads me nicely to my next topic.

COUNCELLING

Between early October and mid November, I was given 6 weekly counselling sessions from the counselling organisation Care to Listen. My counsellor was a woman who explained her perspectives of my situation with my family and ill feelings of not being able to find a romantic partner. One concept that she brought consistently was communication. The things that she said about communication was (at least in my eye) ground-breaking. For most of my life, I have always been very structured in my communicating, whether it was face-to-face, over the phone, in writing of even on social media.

The things that my counsellor taught me about communication were as follows:

1). Communication is a trial and error process. 

There isn't always a right of wrong way to communicate to a person. Sometimes you just have to try different things to get the desired result. Different people send and receive different types of communication differently and you simply have to adapt to the person you are talking to depending on his/her way of interprating language.

2). It's OK to ask a woman out. 

This may sound rather obvious to a lot of my readers but before my counselling sessions, I did not believe that is was a good idea to directly ask a woman out. I thought that it would sound cringeworthy to women if a man was so open about his intimate feelings to a woman. I thought that women would simply freak out if I said anything like "Can I have your number please" to them. However, I have been assured that this way of communicating your desire of someone is completely normal and that it is possible for me to say something like this to a woman that I have deep feelings for.

3). You can only control 50% of any relationship.

No matter how good your intentions are, there are always going to be relationships out there that simply will not work. AT the end of the day, you can only do your half of the relationship. If the other half of the relationship is not going to co-oprerate with you, there nothing you can really do about it. Don't take it personally. You just have forget about the person, wish him/her good luck and move on.

4). It's OK to talk to strangers.

When I was growing up, I was told not to talk to strangers. However, one thing that my counsellor told me is that many relationships start with people that are at first unknown to you. One thing that I need to learn is to talk to strangers. Perhaps I can start by saying hello to someone who works a corner shop or a supermarket. I think this will be a good starting point.

5). Stay confident

One beautiful thing that my counsellor pointed out to me is that I am actually a better communicator that I think. I think my lack of confidence over the years is due to the theory that people on the autism spectrum typically struggle with verbal communication. Therefore, when I find myself in a fallout with someone, I often credit this theory and and start despairing at what I have lost. My counsellor however told me that with time. I will eventually find better people to talk to if I stay at it and keep going. There will always be someone good out there to talk to.

CHESS

In what is my first full calendar year without any over-the-board competition since joining South Norwood Chess Club, I think I have achieved various notable things on the playing site lichess.org.

First, I was a regular competitor in the Coulsdon Chess Fellowship (CCF) 10 minute-a-side rapid-play swiss tournaments on the site which was played on Mondays and Fridays until June. I won 3 of those tournaments within this calendar year a few others from the previous year. However, what was even more pleasing was the fact that I have won 2 of the ChessNetwork 10-minute-a-side Rapid-play tournaments that since the pandemic have happened every Saturday afternoon.  It has also been year in which I have reached new peak rapid and blitz ratings.

On the 5th of August this year, literally 365 days after I had announced my retirement for over-the-board chess, I decided to reverse my decision and plan to play over-the-board chess in the future. However, as of yet, I have not been able to resume over-the -board activity due to the health reasons I mentioned above.

LANGUAGE LEARNING

One interesting ambitions that I had a the start of the year is to start (or restart) learning languages other that Brazilian Portuguese which I have been learning for 2 and a half years. I actually made a weekly schedule at the start of the years about the languages that I would learn. Unfortunately, my problems with my lungs started to take its toll and and in the end, I simply didn't have he energy to learn languages every day. I have however been able to successfully find a good Portuguese teacher who currently lives in Brazil and has given me good lessons via Skype and Zoom for a reasonable fee. 

I feel confident enough in my Portuguese to have confidence speaking the language to native speakers. However. This is not to say that I don't make mistakes nor do I not have moments where I have to look for words to complete a sentence. It just means that I have learnt the language long and well enough to make my own sentences and and keep conversation going within the language. I do however still go through all of the challenges that many language learners go through with pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and even listening to somebody talk a speed. (Mind you, I find it hard to understand a rambler even in English.) The keys to leaning any language is patience, persistence, regular study, practice and having fun.

FUTURE

One thing that I plan to do when my lung health improves is to enroll in a course to become a qualified online English teacher which will give me access to teach English to anyone around the world. With of my experience working with the Brazilian community and helping them with their English, I think I am ready to take that the extra mile and make an official career out off what I am currently doing. It's just a matter of fixing my lungs and getting and appointment with the job centre.

I also want to do a course on accounting as I am currently elected as a trainee treasurer for the West Thornton Community Association (WTCA) and therefore could do with some training in certain fields of the subject. I actually did do a course on accounting in my final year of college but that was 16 years ago and I am sure that things have changed in the accounting world significantly in that time. Also, I think my interest in accounting will be a lot greater than it is in 2005 as back then, I was still in the process of learning about the adult world as well as the fact that back then, I was still trying to work out certain things in my personal life. I look forward to one day taking over as the treasurer of the WTCA when certain things settle down and the current treasurer is ready to step down from his duties.

I have accumulated a good number of Spanish speaking friends on Facebook, so I think that Spanish will be a good language for me to learn next year as well as continuing my Portuguese studies.

Finally I hope to be well enough to play over-the board chess again after announcing that I have come out of retirement. Since the start of the pandemic I have only been playing in online tournaments.  I look forward to one day seeing my old friends one day (and making new ones)  at South Norwood and CCF and showing everyone what I can do in real life games and tournaments.

The End.

Compleated Saturday 18 December 2021