"I like to play chess. I moved to a small town and nobody played chess there..."

"... but one guy challenged me to checkers. I always thought it was kind of a simple game, but I accepted. And he beat me nine or ten games in a row. That’s sort of like living in a small town. It’s a simple game, but it’s played at a higher level."

Quoted here. Worth contemplating. Seems like a metaphor for all kinds of things.

I like to write scholarly dissertations. I moved to the internet and nobody wrote scholarly dissertations there, but one blogger fisked one of my paragraphs. I always thought blogging was kind of a simple game, but I started a blog to defend myself. And that blogger shredded my first nine or ten posts. That’s sort of like living on the internet. It’s a simple game, but it’s played at a higher level.