I really ought to stop reading con reports

[figmo]

It rarely fails to happen:

1. I go to a con.
2. I feel good for having gone to the con and having had a good time.
3. I read the con reports, see myself totally absent, and get really depressed.

This continuously amazes me, given that I've done some things over the years I thought were highly conspicuous. I once coordinated the smuggling of a sousaphone into OVFF. I have run cons. I have done concerts complete with costume changes and choreography. I've tried to make a sanitary napkin with wings fly while on stage. I've brought an insufferably cute dog to cons.

This time even the dog didn't get mentioned.

Comments

Shadow of Insecurity?

[poltr1]

I know how you feel. There are times I feel the same way. I remember a Friday night at OVFF several years ago, where people I knew from past cons were passing by me, not saying hello, treating me as if I wasn't there. (That night, I wrote the words to "Am I A Stranger?". The music came three years later.) Rebecca (my lovely wife) advised me that many folks, when they're at cons, are so focused on getting to where they want to go that whatever around them is lost in the periphery, and that I shouldn't interpret their behavior as a snub.

Sometimes I feel like I'm a filk wallflower because I'm not a performer, up on the stage, playing and performing -- I've spent a lot of time in the audience recently. I find it difficult to jump in during filk circles, since I'm so afraid I'd interrupt someone and get chewed out for it, or someone will interrupt me. Either that or I'm horrendous at reading other people's cues. (I'd probably do better in a non-chaos filk, where the rotation passes in a strict order.)

I call this feeling my "Shadow of Insecurity" -- Shadow because it's a part of me I hide and deny. (I think that term comes from Jungian psychology.) It craves attention, approval, acceptance, and love, because when I'm feeling ignored, I don't feel important, and when I'm in the limelight, I feel important.

Egoboo is like gravy -- it's great when you can get it, but I wouldn't want to become dependant on it or gorge on it.

Re: Shadow of Insecurity?

[figmo.livejournal.com]

Ya know, as I read the comments on this, I realize some of the people I enjoyed chatting with and being around didn't make it into any con reports, either. OTOH, none of them were performers.