I get anxious, as in panicky, feel like I can't breathe, want to run away, over a few particular things:

• I can't plan trips. I can barely pack a suitcase; doing so can take hours of avoidance, including literally leaving the house a couple times just to calm down. Or sometimes staying up all night. When it's time to make plane reservation to bring my boy to see me, I sometimes will have to call my mother and ask her to talk to me to keep me calm as I make them on line (or she'll do them sometimes, though I always give it a try first). I think it's because I get overwhelmed by the feeling that 'll get them wrong, but I'm not sure why that particular thing. In general I avoid planning, but the anxiety attacks are an extreme case.
• I get agitated when there's loud background noise, usually either music or background conversation, when I'm trying to concentrate on something, usually conversation (not background). After some periods of that, usually an hour or two, I start feeling compressed and scared, and usually have to leave wherever it is I am. However, this doesn't always happen — it's partly a function of volume, but there seems to be a random element too.
• When I'm pretty down already I get random panic attacks, or predictable panic attacks due to being around strangers. I have to be in pretty bad shape for these to be at all common, but it can be debilitating For example, last spring when I told POG that I was having trouble and wouldn't be playing ww for a while, I found myself unable to go to the grocery store because doing so would involve talking to the checkout person and I was afraid to. And a couple months ago I had an attack of agoraphobia in the airport — my solution was to bury my head in my iPhone (playing ww) and pretend no one else was around.

Everything I described above is fairly recent — I think my first one was when I was a 2L, so we're talking about the last third of my life. I haven't really gotten used to them.

Note, also, how outside my normal character they are — 95% of the time I'm about as confident as humans get, but here I'm talking about being afraid of pretty non-threatening stuff. This, in turn, makes me annoyed that I have this weakness; it also means that when it's getting bad but not yet horrible, people with me often have a hard time believing it's real unless they know me pretty well.


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Looking this over, two additions:

1. The background noise doesn't have to be loud — any combination of distracting sounds over a long time gets to me, and can cause me to leave. Background music or TV is almost always bad for me, it is just a matter of how long.
2. When I'm stressed about something, particularly planning-type issues as noted above or feeling like I'm disappointing people, there are sometimes other physical symptoms — old injuries will flare up. Right now I am limping from an old lumbar injury from weightlifting; a trip to the chiropractor will fix it, so no big deal if I can find the time, but what's interesting is that I'm pretty sure it came from all the strange things that have happened in the last week.

I would have no idea. I am at best dimly aware of most famous people.

I think this whole thing has gotten plenty of exposure. I knew it would make some waves, but I didn't anticipate the magnitude of the response, nor some particular aspects of it. It's been a bit overwhelming, which is why some legitimate, and more traditionally well-like, questions like how to improve questioners' werewolf games are falling by the wayside.

I don't think so. Well, maybe one: My sense is that you very often don't care when you're a villager. I've seen you be the only one who can work stuff out, so I know you can do it. But often you act like, and even say, you're not going to reread or not going to reexamine your reads. It 's almost as if you think that every game ytou are either destined to succeed or doomed to fail; when your reads are off early you seem to let that dictate your effort level later.

So I suppose that's it: reexamine. Don't just add self—doubt, reexamine when you learn you've been making a significant mistake. Do not assume that you cannot recover from bad reads until next game.

my only opinion on tyra is from the episode of her show where she discussed the HUUUUDGE problem of being a porn star, and sasha grey was on the show.

my opinion of her is very low.

alllllright, since all the cool kids are doing it i'll also ask for thoughts about my ww game?

except ive only wolfed vs atakdog once and that was like my 3rd game ever, but i did play like 8 games with you.

Tyra is just stunning, but its understandable that she doesn't do anything for you; She has the better then everyone thing going on (not nessasarily a bad thing imo)

edit sasha grey is just awesome, what did tyra say?

Link me to a village game ytou think was typical for you, just to give me the proper baseline. (It's very hard for me to analyze the game sof people who have been playing less than a year, except for a few who stand out, without having a particular game to get me started and use as a nucleus for my thoughts - after that, everything starts to come together on its own.)


I'm sure that has nothing to do with it, as I know nothing at all about how she acts; I'm pretty sure I've never seen her speak, nor read anything about her tat sunk in. I essentially never watch television, and I don't read anything about celebrities except completely by accident.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxUq_zzvAaA
watched this a loooong time ago but basically a lot of what sasha grey said was completely edited out of the show ( i googled it later ), tyra was stupid/condescending/not listening at all& just repeating her stupid arguments from what i remember.

also they made sasha grey change her clothes to make her look younger, telling her she looked too adult.

do you want a game we've played together or any game? either way, here's a few of the village games ive played:
the LOST ww game you were in Was a vanillager that got to peek for a mason and was elected leader
WW2 Was a vanillager that had to be found by another villager
sealab was a roleblocker

atakdog, I think you're cool enough to make Godot's Theme into Atakdog's Theme.

Well, in Lost you were very villagery (which as you know from the earlier discussion is something I think is very important), and your reads weren't bad. If that was a typical village game I'd say there wasn't a particular problem. Do you a have a specific concern?

Re: Neal Stephenson, I dunno if it will appeal to you or not, but if you might like Anathem. I guess you have to enjoy discussions about interpretations of physics and reality to enjoy it though.

Favourite bond girl?

believe it or not I've only seem about three Bond films. Tradition almost requires that I go with Ursula Andress (from Dr No - I don't know her character name), but beyond that I'm lost.

My suggestion to solve this problem: a POG Pub game. We take perhaps ten nominations, then it's run like the guesstimation sheep that's now going: everyone gives an (honest ranking), and a guess at the average rankings.

I'd start it, but I'm on my phone. Anyone else is welcome to.

What model cell phone do you have?

iPhone. My fingers are a bit too large to be really fast with the typing, but I'm one of those who really does like the keyboard.

Turn off WWAN data when you get to the UK or things will get expensive. Wifi only!

Hes gonna have it off most of the time in the UK I reckon

oh, I know. And atm it's not even known where/when wifi will be easily available - I may have trouble getting my POG fix.

But as Andy notes, there will be other things to concentrate on anyway...

hunting for rodents or other small mammals (dead or alive)?

Hedgehogs, of course. (I'm pretty sure they're insectivora.)

i aint putting _that_ anywhere (they have fleas, and they're not that small)

well, I'm not going to put it anywhere - the point, as always, is to see it. What the rest of you impure folk do is y'all's business.

thoughts on 'extreme sports'?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiZ5BnLrbVk
much cooler than skateboarding, amirite?

what do you think about 'wasting time'?
is playing video games a waste of time?
is playing ww a waste of time?
is rollerblading a waste of time?
or does it not matter if u enjoy it?