I got to watch myself follow ruts in my road and have written up what I have seen. It moves from one thing to another and seems to cover things that don’t go together. This is not a well written out piece but the flow of my logic. Here is an overview of what it covers.

Summary:
Fear based motivations
It is hard for me to get into trouble
I am very gullible and innocent
Lack of confidence based on lack of situational knowledge
Rejection response – Wired backwards
Why I don’t play RPGs anymore
Losing myself in a character
I am a RPG Snob
Look at those patterns, yup they all fit a model, a strange one all my own.

In talking with someone today, I could really see the play out of patterns I have been postulating and building into a knowledge base. I am most definitely a fear based type (5, 6, 7) whole heartedly. Not that I am actually afraid of anything but that my motivations grow out of fear. In talking things out with someone new, I had a different perspective than any other time I have told these stories and could see how things fit together and make patterns.

I have a hard time getting into trouble. I have done things that have very similar features to some horror stories I have heard from others but with me, nothing bad happens. I don’t get bothered, I don’t get attacked, I don’t get molested. I have attributed this to the fact that I am a 6′ tall woman and have just don’t bother messing with me attitude (which shows up in certain circumstances). I don’t look like a victim, I don’t act like a victim, I am not a victim. I take ownership of all of my stuff and sometimes take ownership out of the hands of others who cause me problems so that I have the power to make things go my way. My baseline attitude is if you don’t like your life, change it.

I am sure all this is a factor but there is more that I have sort of figured out but didn’t really see. I work from a baseline of fear. Very early in any encounter, I have evaluated the risk level and made choices to keep the risk low. Those times when I have done something that sounds dangerous ( like walking a mile on the streets of old town Vienna by myself after 2am back to my hotel) it really is very low risk (the buses stop running at 2am and there is no traffic and no people out at that time. If you are out on the town after 2am, you just stay where you are until 6am when transportation starts up again. In the entire mile I saw one tourist what trying to find something on a big map. I zigged and zagged down some misc alleys and listened for any footsteps. Nothing happened). I have a lot of stories like that. All this minimizing risk happens long before anything looks like it is dangerous and I am not even aware I am doing it. I just have a feeling of confidence in my safety. It doesn’t occur to me to do anything that would actually be dangerous. Things that women are warned about, like meeting an online connection in a private place, doesn’t even occur to me as an option.

One of the reasons that working this way is very good for me is because I am incredibly gullible. I will believe almost anything and follow things stupidly. I protect myself by surrounding myself with good people that don’t take advantage of this. Not that some of my friends don’t delight in playing with this aspect of people, they just quickly find out that I am no fun because I am too easy. I had a boyfriend once that has messing with people as part of his sense of humor. When I would figure out he was messing with me, I would look at him seriously and ask if he was having fun bouncing my head up and down and please don’t do it anymore. No reaction other than that, deadpan. I saw no reason to get mad or angry, I would just move myself to where I would not be affected by it and he would lose me in the process. He valued having me trust him more than he enjoyed playing with my head so he would stop. I actually enjoyed watching him play those games with people that played back. I enjoy the game as long as I am not the ball.

I also uncovered a factor of me being afraid I won’t measure up, or I don’t have the ability to do something. It is tied to know knowing the factors in whatever situation that is bothering me. In the past I have had a lot of problems applying for jobs, filling out applications and sending resumes and cover letters. Big phobia that I would have to over stress myself to make happen and then do something to bleed off the extra energy. I knew it was because I didn’t know who my audience was and I would be judged by what I have written on a page. The page presentation is so limited and static, it bothers me. I am good with interviews. I have nervous but it isn’t something I fear. With an interview, I can see the reactions to what I am presenting and modify the approach or the content to better fit. It isn’t static and it is a relatively accurate presentation of the real me. If they don’t choose me after an interview, I am fine with that because they are making the choice on the real me. If I get booted out because of my paper presentation, I feel like there are so many things I could have done differently if I had more information and I am being judged unfairly based on a static sliver of me.

Is this another Wired Backwards deal? I am fine with the real me being rejected but have a problem with being rejected based on a misunderstanding of who I am. I am under the impression that people that have issues with being rejected hurt more when it is based more on who they really are and it is easier to dismiss when it is only a sliver of themselves that are rejected.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of confidence in myself. I know my strengths and I know my weaknesses and I am comfortable in these. I know that I can do amazing things and can be all sorts of awesome. Get me on my turf and I am good to go. The problem is not knowing what the turf is. I do not have the confidence that I can match up to anything. I am well aware of my limits and if the turf is outside my limits, I want to know ahead of time so I can move things around so either I don’t need to deal with that section of turf, or I have protections and options in place before I start. The more I learn about a situation and the people I am involved in, the more mapped out the turf is and the more I can move to where I can do some good. That is when my confidence shows up.

I have a love/fear relationship with RPGs both table top and live action. I am concerned about getting stuck in the middle of something and not being able to do what I need to or not to know how to deal with it. I have had mostly good experiences but I find this anxiety when it comes to going to a gaming con. My shy side comes out and I just want to watch from the sidelines. But I know that would bore me to tears and frustrate me so I don’t want to go. Talking this out with a long time hard-core gamer, I realized it is my lack of knowledge that is the core of this fear. I don’t know what is going to happen or what my role in it is. I find that I am very cooperative oriented. I need to work with everyone in the group, to support them and have their support. The games where I am the most comfortable is when one of my skills is necessary to the game at hand (I have a use and a purpose) and my character already has a relationship with one of the other characters. It turns out that I have trouble meeting new people as a PC just like I do in real life. Funny that. ;}

Another issue I have is that I will play my character to the hilt, even if that means it messes with game play. I tend to get inside my character and work with those beliefs and thoughts. This has led to conflict when another character has wanted to do something that goes against the best choices of the group or when what they do goes against something important in my character. It seems that I take things very seriously. Bless Alex, during a break after a big fight between our PCs, he complimented me on my game play. That made the negative feelings and frustrations ok and I was able to let them go. I mentally rewrote my character to tone down the problem she had because otherwise she would have to leave the group. After that it was fine.

I am concerned about getting too involved in my character. I have issues with taking on other personality traits and not being able to let them go. I am a ham and have fun on stage but I will never be an actor. There is a huge difference. As an actor, I don’t know how to put on and take off the character. I had a theatre professor I trusted that taught an acting class that I felt it was safe to take. If anyone could teach me to get in and out of character, I felt he could. Sadly for this idea, life’s opportunities had me graduate college instead of taking the final semester I planned which would have included his class. Doing LARPs comes close to these issues and I don’t know how close. It has been safe to stay away and wonder than actually get involved.

I also have what I call my “snob” issue with RPGs. I lucked out and had a wonderful group of gamers when I first started playing in college. It was all story and very little game mechanics. It didn’t matter what game we played or who was the GM, they were all great in their own ways. They had been playing since Jr High and were good friends. A funny/odd note was I had another gaming group I enjoyed and the GM went to the same school at the same time. He wasn’t a friend of theirs but it did lead to the idea in my head that Ft Collins High School is where the best GMs are made. He was an ass and liked to cause problems for his players’ characters but he was a wonderful storyteller and his games were fun. I liked him. I loved the other group even more. I gamed with them for a few years. I haven’t found any game that is as good as theirs. I have been in some really pathetic games (example: forced to follow the storyline of Willow no matter what we did). My baseline was set pretty high and I don’t like finding out that others don’t meet it so I don’t look for games. There have been a few gaming groups that have been worth playing but they don’t seem to last. I enjoyed the 7th Seas game. It lacks a certain flavor I miss but it was fun and I enjoy the people. Sadly the group is made of hardcore gamers and I just didn’t have the stamina to survive for as long as some of the games lasted. Due to communication issues, options around this were never explored and I ended up dropping out.

All this showed up in a three hour talk over lunch with someone new to me but closely connected to my circle of friends. It was very interesting to listen to myself play out patterns I had only seen in theory and watch how strong they were. I couldn’t turn myself from the path even if I wanted to. They are very deep ruts. The first step is seeing, the next is understanding. There is no doubt to my 6 wing and there are so many 5-like methods in my repertoire, it is no wonder I am such an oddball as a 7. Look, another place where I don’t fit the norm, how 4-like of me.

Oooo number code talk, squeeeee. (if you don’t know what the numbers are, talk to me about the enneagram. It does work a little like a dictionary, sort of.)