My card fans were bad. I mean awful. They were uneven, clumpy, and slow, which meant they were ugly, ugly, and ugly.

I searched online for tips and tricks about what I might be doing wrong. The best tip I found was to use new cards and apply fanning powder. Not exactly helpful. I seriously almost bought a beret.

There’s very little instruction about how to do the thing that you’ve been tasked with doing. “Make the cards into an attractive array.” But how? The thing is, no one can tell me how. It’s opaque.

I got fed up with it the other night and said to myself, “This can’t be this damned hard.” I picked up a deck of cards and while I was watching TV with my wife, I fanned the deck. And then I fanned it again. And again. Each time, I noted what happened and how the deck felt in my hands. That’s my job. Attempt, evaluate and adjust. Iterate. Try, fail, review, repeat, fail better.

So, how are my fans now? Less crappy. But my thumbs are sore as hell.