The vagabond of possibilities.

  Yesterday, I was learning the clarinet. This morning, I ran to practice for a marathon. By lunch, I was doing an art commission online. Tomorrow, I plan on participating in a chess competition.

  Last week, I was learning the piano before I gave it up for the clarinet. The same week, I swam to practice for a competition before I chose to practice for a marathon. I was also writing a book before I moved on to art commissions. I had left a soccer team for chess.

  My room was filled with abandoned projects. It was more of a shed where I threw unneeded things rather than my bedroom. However, it was still my room. I started projects here and ended them here.

  There were so many things I could do. I loved this freedom. I wished I had more time to complete them, but time wasn’t infinite. So I wanted to do as many things as I could in my life. I wanted to experience as much as I could in life.

  I was playing a game of chess online to practice for the tournament tomorrow. I wasn’t great at chess, but that didn’t matter; the experience did. So, I spend hours on chess.com. I lost. I won. I kept going. I gained elo, I lost elo.

  It had already been two hours since I played chess. I stopped playing. I still had other things I had to do today. Such as attempting to create my song.

  Granted, I had no experience in music or creating songs, but that didn’t matter. I had already watched a tutorial two days ago. It was time to start it.

  I opened an online music maker and mashed different instruments and notes together, hoping they’d sound great. I listened to it, and it made me regret having ears. It sounded like screeches. I didn’t know music theory.

  The rhythm was mismatched. The notes weren’t in harmony. I had somehow made a song that sounded like a dog whimpering rather than actual instruments.

  So, I planned on completing that song later. It hadn’t worked, and so I’ll try it when I'm more confident. I didn’t know when that would be, but it didn’t matter to me.

  I threw the music sheet I printed earlier into my closet full of abandoned projects, hobbies, and interests. I named it the ‘do-later closet’. I planned on looking back in there later when I was bored and couldn’t find anything else to do.

  I thought for a while about what I could do. I looked at my desk. It was messy and full. There were so many toys, objects, and potential hobbies. By the side of my desk was a guitar. I didn’t know how to play the guitar, but I planned to later.

  Next to the guitar, I found a Rubik's Cube. It was a normal 3x3 one. Upon thinking it further, I hadn’t learnt how to solve it yet.

  Ah, perfect, I could try to solve it. I had found what could keep me busy for a few days.

  I grabbed my Rubik’s Cube and placed it on my desk. I then looked up tutorials on how to solve a 3x3 cube.

  I found a tutorial and tried following the steps. I had spent hours to finally solve it. I then mixed the Rubik’s Cube once more to solve it again. It took me a few minutes to solve it.

  I yelled in accomplishment. I smiled for a moment. I felt proud of myself for accomplishing it.

  I was excited until I stopped smiling. It took me a few minutes. The next step was to shorten the time.

  However, that felt boring to me. I didn’t want to continue. I already lost the excitement. I felt hollow again. I didn’t care about solving the Rubik’s Cube anymore.

  It would take weeks to months to shorten it by a decent amount when I could do something else. I wasn’t particularly interested in Rubik’s Cube anyway; there could be better things to do.

  Now that I solved one, I looked for something else to begin. I had already lost my thrill. I threw my Rubik’s Cube behind me, looking to clean it up later.

  I grabbed my phone, looking for more fascinating things. As I opened my phone, there was a notification reminding me it’s been a month since I last renewed my gym membership. I had forgotten to renew it.

  I then went on social media to scroll for a new hobby to begin. I scrolled down, and it was just regular content, nothing that could be a hobby that I could start.

  As I scrolled, my phone buzzed with an alarm. It was reminding me of my soccer practice that was supposed to begin now. I had forgotten to remove the alarm.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  I hadn’t gone to practice for a few weeks already. I was busy doing other things, more entertaining things.

  I removed the alarm and went back to scrolling. Hours had passed by before I found what I was searching for. At long last, I found an interesting video. It was a cooking video. I hadn’t thought about cooking yet.

  Alright, I’ll begin cooking tomorrow! I tossed my phone lightly onto my desk. It was late, so I didn’t start it now. As I tossed my phone, I got a text message.

  Quickly after hearing the notification, I grabbed my phone again to check my texts.

  ‘Hey, you good? You missed practice again.’ A friend at soccer practice texted me.

  I responded that I was good and couldn’t attend, and then closed the app. Soccer was already boring to me, just like Rubik’s Cube. It had been a long time since I’d seen him; I was so absorbed by my hobbies.

  Reminded about the chess tournament tomorrow, I decided to get a little more practice in before I went to sleep. I opened chess.com and played a few games. It was bullet games.

  I had to annoyingly withdraw from a game as I got another notification I had to pay attention to. After the first notification, I got a barrage of notifications one after another.

  How bothersome… I drudgingly tapped on the notification to read it.

  It was from a group chat of my friends. They were making plans to hang out tomorrow.

  ‘Is tomorrow at 3 PM good with everyone?’ A friend asked.

  I liked the message, just like the rest did. I didn’t bother to talk or help plan it. I wanted to continue something.

  I yawned as I got tired; however, I continued playing bullet chess. The game didn’t end so well.

  I lost the first three games in a row. I then won a game. I then lost. Then won again. I lost once more. I lost again.

  Determined to practice more, to do well at the tournament tomorrow, I instead tried longer games. Blitz games, 3-minute games. It still didn’t go well.

  I lost. I lost. I lost. I lost. I dropped down by 200 elo in just a few hours. It took a few months to climb that 200 elo.

  I hit my bed quite hard. I also almost instinctively threw my phone at a wall, barely managing to hold myself back. Unlike other objects, I couldn’t throw my phone.

  “Shit!” I angrily shouted.

  I dropped to my bed on my back, spreading my arms wide. I was pissed. The constant losing took a toll on me.

  Chess was too hard. I needed a break. I could get better later. Did I really have to do the tournament tomorrow?

  I had already lost my motivation. Chess hadn’t worked out for me. I thought of throwing my chessboard into my closet.

  I quickly got up. I loudly walked to my chessboard and picked it up. Just looking at it was enough to remind me of my losses, my failures.

  In a second after grabbing the chessboard, I headed towards the closet full of my other projects I could not remember, except for a few. So many of them had been there for so long.

  I threw the chessboard in the closet. It didn’t belong in my room anymore. I left the ‘room’ of chess with the door half open. I had to search for another ‘room’ now.

  It had been so long since I took a good look at the closet, so I thought, why not now? The closet was almost full. Just a few more, and I probably couldn’t close the door.

  The bottom was overflowing with past projects. Old instruments. Boardgames. Old toys. A fishing rod. A few drawings. A soccer ball. Basketball, running shoes, hunting rifles, a snowboard, and short stories I attempted to write but never finished. All these were things I attempted but never bothered to finish. These were the only things I could see from the pile of mess.

  Beginning from the top half of the closet were shelves. On the bottom shelf were trivia books, puzzles, video games, and language textbooks.

  I had forgotten that I had tried learning other languages. It was so long ago. I didn’t know English like I do now.

  I looked at the back of the shelf to see what else was there, and there was a… physics textbook.

  My eyes lingered on the physics textbook a little as I gave out a sigh. The book was in the back and had the most dust out of all on that shelf. My head tilted a little. My heart felt hollow for a second.

  After a few more seconds, I immediately smiled as I tried to distract myself. I powered through to the second shelf. I had to do this. I resolved myself to forget about that subject, that hobby, that possibility.

  The second shelf was full of photos. There were photos of me singing, writing, running, and bird watching. There were also even more hobbies. I gave up. I just wasn’t meant for any of those. I wasn’t good enough. Why should I have tried so hard when I knew I was bound to fail anyway?

  There were also some collections I stuffed onto that shelf. I had collected coins, stamps, and rare cards. I thought they’d be great at passing by the time, but I quickly got bored.

  I couldn’t stick to collecting just one type of collection. When I was collecting, I would try to collect them all. It nearly made me go into debt.

  I tried collecting every rare coin, stamp, rare card, and book at the same time. I never got to build a decent collection because of that; it was just a mix of everything. It was nothing impressive.

  My eyes then slowly traced upwards to the final shelf. My head moved very slowly, in dread. It was the shelf I wanted to see the least.

  Finally, I decided not to look. I was too scared. I couldn’t face it. I didn’t want to look back on it.

  I closed the closet door, and with it, I left the game of chess. I wouldn’t attend the tournament the day after.