Amusements in Logic

Starting Monday, I have about 11 hours left of short shifts to do this week before I do some holiday time. In a way that's good. I do three or four hours within three days, and I'll hopefully have enough energy and momentum to clear stuff away at home for the remainder of those days before I dive into time that's to be devoted to mostly leisure. Perhaps weaning myself away from work gradually like this is the way to go, rather than having a more radical transition. 

I'm doing some more advanced programming exercises now. Messing around with the process of trial and error in correcting some missing details and other silly mistakes, is making me think that there was a time in the past when I would have been so much better able to retain the knowledge, hone my skills, and have a peak performance at doing such tasks.* Right now though, I feel as though my brain has to have a lot of rust, dust, and cobwebs brushed and knocked out of it before I can deal with anything that's purely logical. 

There was a time in my life, when I had less busy days and was better able to focus, when I was becoming a real enthusiast for doing the rather esoteric hobby of solving logic puzzles. The British ones were (still are) the best. It was a way to sort of play detective. I was correctly completing ones ranked five stars in difficulty; even the ones without a logic grid, on a regular basis. I became so interested in them that I wondered if I could even create any of my own that would ever be acceptable enough for publication in any one of the puzzle magazines one finds them in. I did start a small portfolio of some that I drafted up, working at composing and editing them piecemeal. I don't remember when it started happening, but I'd guess that it was something I did as an effort to endure the coldest, darkest, loneliest days of winters past.
 

I doubt if dreaming up and writing these things is something one could ever get rich at, or allow me to just quit my day job. Logic puzzles, at least non-digital ones, are a dying amusement these days, like most of the other pencil and paper puzzles; thus their creation is becoming a dying art as well. The jest and appeal of it for me though is that I’d be creating something that like-minded people want to approach for a bit of diversion and positive mental stimulation. Also, the thought of making even a little money from watching an idea grow and come to fruition, even if it's just a small and trivial one, is now becoming a hell of a lot more thrilling to me than that of earning comparatively more money from doing stuff that wears you down with boring routine, and constantly muddling through and dealing with others' ignorance and stupidity in the act (guise) of service.

Back when I taught English for my brief time overseas; being sent frequently without a prepared lesson plan, into a classroom full of kids often too incorrigible or indifferent to learning anything, making and presenting a logic problem was often my salvation. If the kids were disinterested in learning language directly, they were more often than not more willing to be involved with a game or puzzle based on a formula, which they had to force themselves to express in English. I wasn't any good at enforcing classroom management with structure and discipline, but I did alright with at least capturing the attention of those few students who enjoyed the challenge of doing more critical thinking.

The one thing I miss most is getting to be engaged with more people who regularly deploy logic and common sense; so that's the kind of company I should be seeking out during my holiday time. I suppose then that one of my ambitions during this vacation time will be to start probing through and editing these past works of mine, and find publishers to submit them to. If they get rejected, I'll post them here to share with other interested parties. Perhaps my followers who are logic puzzle enthusiasts, especially those from the UK** who read my blog, could help me with this project.

 *- I'm referring to a time when the computer languages and technology I'm messing around with now did not yet exist.

**- The stats from my reader numbers by nation indicate that readers from the UK are only 7th in the standings. As it is currently, the rankings of my numbers of followers before that placement, by nation, rank as such: 1. Canada, 2. Russia, 3. Latvia, 4. United States of America, 5. Germany, 6. Ukraine.