Next year, I'll tell you where you can find me...in New York City! I've set a personal goal of attending the U.S. Memory Championships. If I win, I'll get a free ticket to the world championships in England.
What are the memory championships? Well, basically, you have to memorize stuff like decks of cards and poetry and random numbers. And you have to memorize it quickly. If you are fast and accurate, you win!
Why am I doing this? Well, when I was six or seven-years-old, I memorized a deck of cards forwards and backwards for my grandfather. He was so astonished that he still talks about it. He wanted me to become a card counter in Vegas, but with the advent of card shuffling machines (which render card counting useless), I'm going to have to look elsewhere for memory fame and glory.
Actually, you don't need an above average memory to win the Memory Championships. You just have to understand memory techniques and practice them until you become quick and proficient. That's what Joshua Foer, who wrote Moonwalking with Einstein, claims anyway. We'll see if he's right. I bought the book (it's still in the mail), and I plan to use the resources that he provides to seek out primary sources from memory experts. Then I plan to practice every day.
I must admit that I like to indulge in delusions of grandeur at times, and while I will never excel at any physical sport, world domination in a mental sport is still within my grasp. I may be really bad at it. I may lack the motivation to excel. I'm going to give it a shot, though, and I'm going to go to the championship in New York (barring world disasters, ill health, or travel mishaps).
I'm so excited. Anyone out there in the blogosphere have random life goals that they want to share?
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