According to 51 Clubhouse Games, I have played 578 games of Klondike Solitaire. There is not much that works on my nervous system, you know? Solitaire is my escape from the chaos.
The chaos of allistic people and their roundabout ways of comminicating.
The chaos of the world.
The chaos of my problems.
The chaos I cause within myself.
Solitaire is one of the few things that can even for a few minutes soothe me when I'm so deep in survival mode that my stomach feels sick.
I am not even particularly good at the game. I sometimes play draw 3 with limited success and have some small strategies back of pocket. Like not pulling smaller numbers down unless they give an opening to move other small numbers. To not be reckless and pull the first King I get when I have a space. But I don't think much of them. This isn't about winning. It is about being engaged just enough to feel I have control over something. It's about organizing something. It's about order. It's about simple rules with simple outcomes. Which... is good. I only win 50% of the time after all with draw 1.
I've played many puzzle games through the decades. I remember other than Klondike Solitaire, trying Minesweeper, setting it aside because my brain wouldn't relax with it. But Spider Solitaire and Mahjong were go-tos. In a way to think of those build in MS XP games is to appreciate the paradigm of the world back then too. No intermittent shady ass ads, no microtransactions. Just old graphics and simple requirements. I wonder if I had been born later if I had connected Solitaire as I do now. If I would have formed a lesser impression after downloading a fremium version of it. What would I have turned to without it? Would I have indulged more in my less wholesome go-tos? Become a shopping addict (halfway there as it is tbh)? Done more doomscrolling? I don't know. There's not much that truly brings me a pure comfort without guilt or shame, like my 578 games of Klondike Solitaire.
Repetition is not failure. Ask the waves, ask the leaves, ask the wind.
– Mark Nepo