FA+
Shop
This Past Weekend
12 years ago
Indy Fur Con resulted in a lot of soul searching this past weekend. Helping organize a 4-room, 16-person, room block and constantly being surrounded by people for the entire weekend really helped me learn a lot about myself and my friends.
First thing I learned is that I need to do a better job of watching what I drink. Unlike past cons, I didn't have someone handing me hard drinks and watching me get lit. This was all my own doing and it was pretty much every night. Friday night was, by far and away, my worst. I remember being louder than usual, force feeding Cheez-Its to people, and nearly breaking a friend's arm :/
At the time, I didn't think anything of the injury. It was brought to may attention the next morning which really put me in a rotten mode for nearly the entire day. I didn't take it out on anyone. However, I sensed that most of my friends and people at that room party were very upset with me. I don't know how accurate this was, but it was the impression I was getting.
I was able to take the injured friend off to the side that afternoon and talk about the incident. He took it much better than I would've if someone would've done the same to me. Nonetheless, I still felt guilt-ridden nearly all day. I went out to eat lunch alone and dinner alone, removing myself from social situations. After a nap and being able to talk with a trustworthy roommate, I did feel better and decided to make an effort to taper my alcohol consumption for the remainder of the con. (Of course, this started my playing Kings.)
Saturday night was much better though. The worst I did was model underwear, at least a half-dozen pairs, for people at our room party. I don't think anyone minded >.>;;;
Sunday was going fine with a good lunch at Penn Station with friends, some intense fursuit games, a relaxing afternoon of watching the PGA Championship, some poker, and an amazing dinner at Maggiano's. Afterwards, several of us got together for some poker upstairs.
All was going well til I busted out of the cash game after being unable to capitalize on good pocket hands. (AQ is a good hand, but not went 863 is your flop.) I rebought back in. And first hand, I get AKo. This same trustworthy roommate who helped me through the tough situation was also in the hand. Blinds were 5-10. He acted first and raised to 30. I re-raised to 100. He re-raised to 300. I went all-in with 1000. He thought about it for a while, and called my all-in with TT. Nothing came out on the flop, turn, or river to help either of us and his pair beat my high card. I was pissed and stormed out. I posted some passive-aggressive shit on Twitter before trying to fall asleep but was unable to. My mind started to wander as my thoughts became more and more contemptuous and cynical. It took me over 3 hours to actually fall asleep.
This morning, I was still very upset at the events at the previous night. While packing to leave the con, I made a snide remark toward the roommate which escalated quickly. I began moving my stuff to the car. On the second trip upstairs, I grabbed the remaining items of mine and stormed out of the room. I didn't even make it halfway to the elevators before my eyes started to water. What was I doing? Was I really willing to destroy a friendship over a stupid poker game? Why was I reading into signals that were figments of my imagination? How could I be so selfish? I just dropped my belonging and sat by the elevators, pondering what I was doing for what felt like an eternity as friends passing by stopped to make sure I was okay.
Finally, another friend needed to catch up with me. When he did, I asked him to watch my belongings as I returned to the room to apologize for all of my actions. The rest of the afternoon went better than I could've hoped. Things felt back to normal as we all hit this nice bar for lunch before going our separate ways. (The buck is still scrolling thru the list of starting QBs for Arizona.) The drive back to Chicagoland was a great chance for me to reflect on myself: why I did the shit I did, what I need to do to make it up to everybody, and how to prevent it in the future.
First, I put a lot of stress on myself. I am a leader by nature. I take responsibility for a lot of things. I don't know what the root reasoning for this is, but it's a common theme in anything I am apart of. As a result, if anything associated with my events goes wrong, I blame myself. I was the de facto head of this room block at IFC (even though one person came up with the idea and another collected the money for it.) So, if people were not having fun, it was my fault. I tried to make sure that all 16 of us were included in everything we did because it's a dick move to invite 10 people in the room block to do something, but not the other 5, yes? On top of that, we have another 4 people (a husky, a puma, a shepherd, and a tiger) who became de facto members of our room block because of how often they were hanging out with us. So, essentially, we had a 20-person room block which got the nickname: The Huscoon Room Block. (Yes, this is flattering.)
However, as mentioned above, there were times when I went for food by myself. Have you ever tried to gather more than 6 people for a meal at a furry con? It is a fucking nightmare. In fact, there were times while we were playing poker, someone in our dinner group would invite another poker player, and I would vocally groan. Never because I didn't like the person, but because I know how quickly these become logistics nightmares. (Hint: If you want to go to dinner with me at MFF, tell me it's only going to be us [less than 7] and I will jump at the chance. If people end up getting tagged onto our group to make it 7 or more, I will give death glares.)
Next, I need to do a better job of keeping my alcoholic behavior under control. This is easier said than done as anyone can imagine. When I'm drunk, I get louder, become more physically playful, and more aggressive. Anyone at our Friday night room party will confirm this. The problem here is: if I'm drunk, I'm not going to be aware of what I am doing that I should not be doing. I don't want to cut out drinking altogether because there are strong social benefits if I've had 2-4 drinks, depending on the strength of them. However, after that threshold, the benefits start to disappear and become hindrances. And no, I am not a good listener when I'm drunk. I honestly do not know what to do about this problem...
Finally, I'm competitive. I have always been a competitive person and I am not going to apologize for being so. If I wasn't competitive, I would not be the person that I am today, and I mean that in a good way. However, being competitive means that I can develop a win-at-all-costs attitude or become a very sore loser. If there is one part of my personality that I need to work on more than anything, it is controlling the reactions associated with my competitive. If one would ask any of my regular poker friends, they would actually say I have gotten much better about controlling my anger at the poker table. I honestly believe I was only a couple of blow-ups away from being uninvited from poker nights a few years back. I'm far from perfect right now as Sunday night shows and I have a lot of work to do to become a better loser.
I think the best step is to use my analytical mind to sedate my competitive mind. A good example is Sunday night. Even though I initially saw TT v AKo as a highly questionable call, the odds are 57-43% in favor of TT. I also need to stay off twitter after an emotional loss. Nothing good has EVER come from being on twitter when I'm toxic like I was last night. In fact, even if I don't want to at the time, my best course of action is to probably stay with my poker friends and talk about the hand. I mean, the people I play poker with are some of the best in the entire fandom. (I'm not bragging, I'm just being honest. It'd be like if the 2012 USA Basketball team got together for a pick-up game every other weekend or so. We are really that good at poker.) But most importantly, when I am the most pissed about a poker outcome, it's because I immediately start to doubt if what I did was the right thing. (Friday night, I got pissed too. But I handled it much better because I knew I made the right move and just got fucked sideways with a 3-outter on the river.) Not drinking before poker would probably help too. Just saying.
That does it for my introspective journal post after this roller coaster of a weekend. Despite all of this, I am so happy to hear how much fun my friends, my roommates, and my poker buddies had at the convention. (Talk about an heavily overlapping Venn diagram.) I do love the idea of us getting together and picking a convention to simply invade for our own self-interest. I may ask someone else take charge of the room blocking thing. But would I do this all over again despite the issues? Without a doubt in my mind. Why? Because I love my friends. They are an extension of me (no homo) and they help make me who I am (still no homo). If 15 dear friends of mine had a great convention because of something I helped put together, then damnit, it was worth it. :)
First thing I learned is that I need to do a better job of watching what I drink. Unlike past cons, I didn't have someone handing me hard drinks and watching me get lit. This was all my own doing and it was pretty much every night. Friday night was, by far and away, my worst. I remember being louder than usual, force feeding Cheez-Its to people, and nearly breaking a friend's arm :/
At the time, I didn't think anything of the injury. It was brought to may attention the next morning which really put me in a rotten mode for nearly the entire day. I didn't take it out on anyone. However, I sensed that most of my friends and people at that room party were very upset with me. I don't know how accurate this was, but it was the impression I was getting.
I was able to take the injured friend off to the side that afternoon and talk about the incident. He took it much better than I would've if someone would've done the same to me. Nonetheless, I still felt guilt-ridden nearly all day. I went out to eat lunch alone and dinner alone, removing myself from social situations. After a nap and being able to talk with a trustworthy roommate, I did feel better and decided to make an effort to taper my alcohol consumption for the remainder of the con. (Of course, this started my playing Kings.)
Saturday night was much better though. The worst I did was model underwear, at least a half-dozen pairs, for people at our room party. I don't think anyone minded >.>;;;
Sunday was going fine with a good lunch at Penn Station with friends, some intense fursuit games, a relaxing afternoon of watching the PGA Championship, some poker, and an amazing dinner at Maggiano's. Afterwards, several of us got together for some poker upstairs.
All was going well til I busted out of the cash game after being unable to capitalize on good pocket hands. (AQ is a good hand, but not went 863 is your flop.) I rebought back in. And first hand, I get AKo. This same trustworthy roommate who helped me through the tough situation was also in the hand. Blinds were 5-10. He acted first and raised to 30. I re-raised to 100. He re-raised to 300. I went all-in with 1000. He thought about it for a while, and called my all-in with TT. Nothing came out on the flop, turn, or river to help either of us and his pair beat my high card. I was pissed and stormed out. I posted some passive-aggressive shit on Twitter before trying to fall asleep but was unable to. My mind started to wander as my thoughts became more and more contemptuous and cynical. It took me over 3 hours to actually fall asleep.
This morning, I was still very upset at the events at the previous night. While packing to leave the con, I made a snide remark toward the roommate which escalated quickly. I began moving my stuff to the car. On the second trip upstairs, I grabbed the remaining items of mine and stormed out of the room. I didn't even make it halfway to the elevators before my eyes started to water. What was I doing? Was I really willing to destroy a friendship over a stupid poker game? Why was I reading into signals that were figments of my imagination? How could I be so selfish? I just dropped my belonging and sat by the elevators, pondering what I was doing for what felt like an eternity as friends passing by stopped to make sure I was okay.
Finally, another friend needed to catch up with me. When he did, I asked him to watch my belongings as I returned to the room to apologize for all of my actions. The rest of the afternoon went better than I could've hoped. Things felt back to normal as we all hit this nice bar for lunch before going our separate ways. (The buck is still scrolling thru the list of starting QBs for Arizona.) The drive back to Chicagoland was a great chance for me to reflect on myself: why I did the shit I did, what I need to do to make it up to everybody, and how to prevent it in the future.
First, I put a lot of stress on myself. I am a leader by nature. I take responsibility for a lot of things. I don't know what the root reasoning for this is, but it's a common theme in anything I am apart of. As a result, if anything associated with my events goes wrong, I blame myself. I was the de facto head of this room block at IFC (even though one person came up with the idea and another collected the money for it.) So, if people were not having fun, it was my fault. I tried to make sure that all 16 of us were included in everything we did because it's a dick move to invite 10 people in the room block to do something, but not the other 5, yes? On top of that, we have another 4 people (a husky, a puma, a shepherd, and a tiger) who became de facto members of our room block because of how often they were hanging out with us. So, essentially, we had a 20-person room block which got the nickname: The Huscoon Room Block. (Yes, this is flattering.)
However, as mentioned above, there were times when I went for food by myself. Have you ever tried to gather more than 6 people for a meal at a furry con? It is a fucking nightmare. In fact, there were times while we were playing poker, someone in our dinner group would invite another poker player, and I would vocally groan. Never because I didn't like the person, but because I know how quickly these become logistics nightmares. (Hint: If you want to go to dinner with me at MFF, tell me it's only going to be us [less than 7] and I will jump at the chance. If people end up getting tagged onto our group to make it 7 or more, I will give death glares.)
Next, I need to do a better job of keeping my alcoholic behavior under control. This is easier said than done as anyone can imagine. When I'm drunk, I get louder, become more physically playful, and more aggressive. Anyone at our Friday night room party will confirm this. The problem here is: if I'm drunk, I'm not going to be aware of what I am doing that I should not be doing. I don't want to cut out drinking altogether because there are strong social benefits if I've had 2-4 drinks, depending on the strength of them. However, after that threshold, the benefits start to disappear and become hindrances. And no, I am not a good listener when I'm drunk. I honestly do not know what to do about this problem...
Finally, I'm competitive. I have always been a competitive person and I am not going to apologize for being so. If I wasn't competitive, I would not be the person that I am today, and I mean that in a good way. However, being competitive means that I can develop a win-at-all-costs attitude or become a very sore loser. If there is one part of my personality that I need to work on more than anything, it is controlling the reactions associated with my competitive. If one would ask any of my regular poker friends, they would actually say I have gotten much better about controlling my anger at the poker table. I honestly believe I was only a couple of blow-ups away from being uninvited from poker nights a few years back. I'm far from perfect right now as Sunday night shows and I have a lot of work to do to become a better loser.
I think the best step is to use my analytical mind to sedate my competitive mind. A good example is Sunday night. Even though I initially saw TT v AKo as a highly questionable call, the odds are 57-43% in favor of TT. I also need to stay off twitter after an emotional loss. Nothing good has EVER come from being on twitter when I'm toxic like I was last night. In fact, even if I don't want to at the time, my best course of action is to probably stay with my poker friends and talk about the hand. I mean, the people I play poker with are some of the best in the entire fandom. (I'm not bragging, I'm just being honest. It'd be like if the 2012 USA Basketball team got together for a pick-up game every other weekend or so. We are really that good at poker.) But most importantly, when I am the most pissed about a poker outcome, it's because I immediately start to doubt if what I did was the right thing. (Friday night, I got pissed too. But I handled it much better because I knew I made the right move and just got fucked sideways with a 3-outter on the river.) Not drinking before poker would probably help too. Just saying.
That does it for my introspective journal post after this roller coaster of a weekend. Despite all of this, I am so happy to hear how much fun my friends, my roommates, and my poker buddies had at the convention. (Talk about an heavily overlapping Venn diagram.) I do love the idea of us getting together and picking a convention to simply invade for our own self-interest. I may ask someone else take charge of the room blocking thing. But would I do this all over again despite the issues? Without a doubt in my mind. Why? Because I love my friends. They are an extension of me (no homo) and they help make me who I am (still no homo). If 15 dear friends of mine had a great convention because of something I helped put together, then damnit, it was worth it. :)
sometimes, its just hard to control your emotions when things dont go your way. I truly hope you find your way dude, cause you're really awesome! also glad you enjoyed the con
But you also should muchly control your drinking. If it gets you THAT bad (and I've seen you sober pissed at people), then you should either lay off completely, or just stop at a couple,. Yer not one the the Pro Drinkers from Chicago yet...yer just sowing yer wild oats still. Like when you went to that MFM, and we had that loooong talk at 4 AM..remember?
Point is, we're all human (even though we sometimes like to pretend otherwise), so try to put it behind ya and not let it bother ya. And I'm glad you had an overall good time!
I wouldn't say these are out of the ordinary, but they are more extreme cases of some personality issues I have and need to keep in check. If I truly believed they were that rare, I wouldn't be too worried about repeating them.
First, I put a lot of stress on myself. I am a leader by nature. I take responsibility for a lot of things. I don't know what the root reasoning for this is, but it's a common theme in anything I am apart of.
I think I understand part of your competitive personality, to a lesser degree, and although I don't know you personally, if I were to take a stab, I think validation is a big driving factor. Validation is such an imbued emotional desire that it is difficult to rationalize with. The analytical mind can, through experience, help to untwist the reasons that lead to it, but speaking from personal experience it's a really heavy burden and self analysis only goes so far.
There IS nothing inherently wrong with being competitive or naturally adopting a role of leadership. There's a lot to respect about it, and some of the things you've said lead me to believe that despite the stress, you like the admiration/status (aka "validation") that accompany it. The problem with a need for validation is that it can be addictive, and no matter how much you pour the glass never is full.
The rational mind knows that we don't have to win everything to be worthy. The emotional mind says FUCK YOU and tosses over the table in a bout of blind fury. Good luck getting your rational mind to suppress the emotional when you're in a state like that... My point, I guess, is that those moments are super hard to control once they arrive, but with practice and analysis (not just from yourself, but trusted parties are pretty essential here), you can improve to the point where you don't reach the blind emotional state. Doing things to reduce the negative outcome of being in an emotional state is a good step, but that's merely treating the symptoms and not the cause.
Egos are very protective things and do not like being questioned or fought. I'm striving pretty hard to make my own semi-permeable, to deflect attacks I know are outright bullshit, and let in those truths people speak that would, if I listened to them, make me a genuinely better person, so I can direct my actions to be more effective.
I would agree that the desire for validation is a part of why I do what I do. I think another part is a nature lack in trust of others until they can prove otherwise. In fact, there was a case of this with the room organizing for IFC. At one point, I had to force myself to let go and allow the friends who were already at the convention to take control. That was very difficult for me.
The rational mind knows that being a sore loser hurts one's validation. The rational mind, when playing the game of poker for as long as I have, understands how much luck is involved in the game. Winning 1/8th of your hands is a extremely good night, even if it doesn't sound like it. Now, if I can just communicate that to the emotional mind.
*scribble-scribble-scribble*
Noted.
But seriously, we all have those moments where things we say or do go out of bounds, whether or not we've been drinking or not. (Lord knows I've had moments of excess.) But it's very commendable that you realized what happened, then went back to set things right, and finally, reflected on the entire encounter to discern where you can work to improve or, in the short term, be more mindful of possible risks. All of these...could be considered qualities of a good leader. *pet-pets*
Thank you for sharing.
Now you know my stresses about having lots of guests over with alcohol. I have not had issues since me not allowing drinking besides a totally stupid person without a brain causing an issue. I just don't want the headaches from it. A lot of people get overly loud and obnoxious. And you should not need to drink to have a good time. My belief is that if that's the only way you can have a good time some place, I don't want you over.
Having said that, we've already talked a lot about the competition. I don't want to be that guy that is a poor winner. I know I have come off like that from time to time... and it's not good.
When I'm mad during competition, I quickly rage and then it passes, because it's just a game, regardless of the outcome. Poker is the same thing, I get done with a hand, lose, go off, pout, and then come back. I hate getting busted out of tournaments, but I do like to do things as socialize with other people, or just deal.
I honestly think I'd be a gaming dealer if I was unskilled, because I could deal and watch cards all day long being dealt to people.
Anyway, now I'm just rambling. I think you whole-heartedly for managing the room block and getting everyone situated; that's an admirable task with a bunch of furs. Same with dinner; I know that you wanted some smaller groups, and we managed with medium sized groups, but hey, it worked out for the most part.
At the end of all of this, we all needed some time to decompress, relax and enjoy, everything was always on the go, go go, which doesn't bode well for 3 days straight. Maybe if we do this again, get a suite that everyone can mingle in, and then have the room block or something like that. I dunno, but at least everyone could be in a common area so 2 rooms don't get the brunt of the ongoing activity.
I'm certainly not perfect either... even being a lion ;)