Pre-game note - Updated

Ok - actual anxiety levels with physical symptoms are fairly high and definately competition related but outside event triggered ( I did not manage to stick with my "no political conversations" plan) Also weird ( but competitive journal level honest) thing where I read that Jackie Lee submitted an article on women and Magic and suddenly the anxiety re: competition spiked to accelerated heartrate and slightly shaky hands.

OK Causes;

Generalized anxiety for scholastic professional reasons

• Specific anxiety for social topics involving women and politics and women and art and aging ( and direct effect on me)
• Worry that I'm going to be so rusty I'll embarass myself at FNM ( this is dumb yet still true)
• Pressure on the fact that I'm still not nearly as good as many of the women who were at Baltimore GP : I say over and over again that it's not really equality unless women are allowed to play the game without it being noted and we can suck at it too but I obviously don't really believe it.

Ok this goes back to the idea that women generally prefer to compete publically when they have a level of confidence and mastery, as well as a lack of desire to be that "girl player but she's not very good" when you're the only girl at the shop.

Since a new job lead didn't come through , I'd already been having anxiety based on the national political scene and a few other non-magic triggers happened today, I'm going to follow the panic attack management procedure and wait until it works to make the deck decision. Macro decision making is obviously affecting micro decision making, but accelerated heart rate for over an hour with flare ups is not a sensible thing to do nothing about - update to aftereffects on game from the pysch should be posted on this post - game analysis on a separate one.

Jeeze this is a special kind of idiocy . . .

UPDATE

So that was a whole lot of nothing - although I did not do "well" at FNM, I had absolutely no symptoms of anxiety, mistakes in play were all regular mistakes in play ( and two opportunities to be really, really mana-screwed, I did actually win match with 2 land). I did not feel incompetent or like a bad player, even though I lost a lot they were all close games with a lot of interaction.

Conclusion - either I've got Barbra Streisand level stage fright, or my real -life situation is worse than I thought and prepping for the game since it's the least connected thing is where I really notice it. I will make sure to attend more FNMs to see

a) if it continues, it also might be deck insecurity

b) if it affects my play. Breakdown of FNM with the actuall tactics and lessons learned and the cool friendly social interaction that makes this whole post seem so ridiculous

c) Since I was happy to be playing and in a good friendly headspace during the games if this is like my real life stage fright which I have and have learned to handle as an actress ( it's something I just identify and use for energy) Magic does not benefit from that kind of energy burst though, so I'm hoping that it's not connected to the game.

Bonus observation: I didn't even have any of those awkward moments where I say something I feel is off and then obsess about it. I do know that if anyone who knew me was reading this blog they would wonder what was going on since I'm actually considered not just very social, but pretty good at it. Anxiety as a hidden disability . . . can't lie to the competitive journal.

Takeaway

I'm not happy with how I placed but I think I could have done a lot better if I hadn't lost a few hours to second guessing myself and reviewing the cards I wanted to bring. I did have a really good time so at least my policy of "Oh dear I seem to be afraid of this, I guess I'd better go do it" is still a sound and probably healthy one.