Testing Delicious posting - please ignore...

[andrewducker]

• Anxiety in uncertain situations
  I get this - if I have absolutely no idea what to do then I hate just leaping in. I'm getting better at this though.
  (tags: games Go anxiety stress)
• Retina displays coming next year
  800x600 resolution - coming to an eye in you!
  (tags: augmentedreality technology reality TheFuture)
• It's A Good Life: Jerome Bixby
  You'll probably have seen the "Twilight Zone" story based on this.
  (tags: scifi writing fiction short_story literature)
• Newspaper circulation at pre-WWII low - less than 13% read them.
  Thank goodness I get mine via the internet!
  (tags: newspapers TheFuture)

Comments

[meihua.livejournal.com]

> Anxiety in uncertain situations

I used to get this too - including with games such as Go, no less! - but have mostly beaten it now. It was all about being scared of being perceived to be crap at something.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

> Anxiety in uncertain situations

Good god yes. Though only sometimes. Mind you, seems I am vastly more self-centered than that chap, so at least I am spared a lot of the "awareness of hurting (a) friend(s)" part of the pain.

I get all the frustration, annoyance and anger at my own incompetence - but that does not seem to engender as great a fear of doing anything at all as the guy describes.

I have a good history of doing things really quite well the first time I try them - I *expect* to do well at new things very quickly as that's the general pattern. So when I don't (as I perceive it) I can get frighteningly upset and/or frustrated.

My mum once said to me "Can't you do something just for the fun of it?" and I replied "Where's the fun if you aren't good?". That is precisely how I feel. I hate being bad at things but I intensely dislike doing things *purely* for practice - I have very little motivation for making something I don't actually want or learning a song I will not be performing. I equally dislike messing something up that *does* matter.

I do not ever want to learn to enjoy being bad at something. Where then is the motivation to improve?

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

ah with me it's not a fear of "being perceived to be crap" it's a fear of *being* (in my own judgement) crap. Which is probably why many people don't understand that mood when it takes me - often they think I am doing just fine...

[meltie.livejournal.com]

I strongly empathise with the Go guy. I think it starts out as a fear-of-being-crap and then immediately blends with a fear-of-being-moody-because-i'm-aware-of-fear-of-being-crap. I don't really know how to surmount it, and it does stop me trying new trivial and non-trivial things.

I'm surprised and pleased i'm not the only one though.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

The newspaper circulation figures are American. Which figures: their newspapers are parochial, vapid, celeb-obsessive local shitwipes containing 80% advertising by volume.

The corresponding circulation figures in the UK are a lot higher, despite the encroaching internet.

[simont]

Comments on this and the previous post suggest that people are mostly ignoring your instruction to ignore these posts :-)

The Go thing was interesting. I didn't get that myself when I learned Go, but I can easily see how if you were going to get it with any game then Go could well be the one. To some extent it's a general problem with almost any game of strategy that the opening moves tend to be the most strategically significant (the value at stake in each move tends to decrease as the game progresses) and yet also the most difficult to make well (requiring a good overview of the entire game tree, unlike endgame moves where the remaining possibilities might be few enough that even a previously inexperienced player can foresee a reasonable fraction of them), and hence the most stressful to a beginner who can predict that those few moves can make or break their game and has none of the experience required to even begin to guess how to make them right. (It's telling that even professional players of strategy games tend to have thought their opening theory out in advance, or more usually learned it from other people who had done so before them.) Go is rather more so on all of these counts than many other games, so that feeling will no doubt be amplified.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

lol - I noted the last one was "ignore" but not this one...

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

For me it's not quite a fear of being crap (though the following can include that) but fear of getting it wrong when there is expectation that I won't. I have no problem being crap at Go, so long as I've no expectation of myself (or perceived expectation from others) that I shouldn't be crap at it. Then I'm hella anxious (and self-annoyed).

I find meeting new people anxiety inducing, not because I'm worried about being boring, but because I get hugely worried about greeting people in the wrong way. A kiss when they expect a hug, a handshake when they expect a kiss, a complicated, inter-digit, semi-shoulder touch low five when they're expecting a pat on the shoulder. I can spend a good degree of time worrying about the fact I've got to say goodbye to someone because I'm not sure how they'll expect me to do it and I might cock it up.

Obviously the answer is "you can't cock it up, you're as right as they are", but because there's expectation (on my part or theirs as to how it should be done) I get real anxious like.