Ode to Solitaire.

Sometimes at the end of a long day, I'll play a game of solitaire. Or two. Or one hundred.

It's very soothing, and somewhat addicting.

I think it's because it's such a neutral thing. It doesn't play favorites. It doesn't care if you had a good day or a bad day. It doesn't care if you are skinny or fat, rich or poor, young or old.

It's just a mathematical construct, who (which) doesn't even know you're playing it.

It's a pure meritocracy, if you will.

Which, like I say, is very refreshing.

Matching your wits against something that won't play favorites, who won't judge you, which only responds to true input, not status or looks or money.

So I play the game, and I can see patterns, and I can see luck, and I can see skill. I can test my awareness and smarts, and I can look for ways to beat it, and it plays fair, dammit. Totally fair.

It's like Zen. Even when I'm losing, it seems right and proper with the world. All is fair and equal, and it's just the way things are.

When luck and skill combine, the cards just seem to click into place, and it seems easy.

And when luck and skill fail, nothing clicks, and I lose game after game after game. But it's O.K., Cause I'm sure I'll win the NEXT game.

I had a friend once, who actually ended up moving to Vegas to pursue her interest in poker. (She played online). I asked her if she ever thought of playing Vegas-style Solitaire, and she laughed in my face. "Too much luck," she said.

Well, yeah. Luck and skill. But her idea of a good game was one which she could outplay other people -- take advantage of their weaknesses, and their lack of skill, and play mind games, and just more or less prey on other players. The stronger against the weaker.

No thanks.

I'd rather play the hard cold world of luck and skill and see how I come out. Me against the System, me against the Universe, which will reward me without caring if I play consistently and well. But who will punish me with an equal lack of caring when I fail.

Fair enough, I say.

Back when I was writing, what appealed to me was that I thought of it as a meritocracy. I thought if I wrote something really good, it would be published. I'd be paid. The readers would read it and like it or not like it, but ...it wouldn't be filtered it wouldn't be constantly hindered by office politics and favoritism.

Naive, huh? But after failing miserably to get any kind of worthwhile job after college because I interviewed horribly and maybe that was only the truth because I wasn't a people person but I would have been a smart, honest, reliable and hard worker --well, I thought the writing would speak for itself.

Same thing with the store. I don't have to play games with co-workers, or schmooze with the boss, or try to convince my supervisor I'm doing a good job.

When you own a business, bottom-line is -- either you earn money or you don't, and it ain't open to interpretation, to favoritism, or stupid bosses, or brown-nosing supervisors.

In a way, that's almost the very definition of a nerd; feeling more comfortable with systems than people. Looking back, I think I was lucky to have made my career as a storekeeper instead of a writer. Owning a store made me deal with people on a daily basis and smoothed away the rougher edges of my personality, which probably wouldn't have happened as a writer. With me, isolation breeds isolation.

So I wouldn't trade it. Still, it's nice to come home sometimes to a non-human interaction, which engages the brain and the luck, but not the emotions....

Solitaire is like that with me. It's just a way to test my skill and my luck, without being hampered by others.

I guess that's why they call it Solitaire.