2048

Distraction: In other words, a smartphone. If you own a smartphone, you know what I'm talking about. It's not very hard to procrastinate something by playing a game, trolling a social media feed, or checking email. I purposefully don't have many games on my phone, but one of my favorites has been 2048. If you haven't played, in this game you have a little 4x4 board with numbers (multiples of 2) that you slide to combine matching numbers into bigger numbers, with the goal of obtaining a 2048 tile. I really haven't played much until recently, when I decided it was an easy way to take a short study break.

During one such break this week, I was playing 2048 and had made considerable progress. I was getting nervous and began to sweat. Shortly after I reached the 1024 tile, Marian called me and that interrupted my game (don't worry I answered. She's definitely more important to me!). When we hung up, I decided to finish out the game, and within about 10 swipes, I won! I couldn't believe it. I had no idea I was so close. Here's the evidence of my victory.

Although this was just a trivial game on my smartphone, the same thing happens in real life. Sometimes we are so close to the goal and we don't even realize it. But if we just hold on and press on, we may soon be surprised by the result.