Do it embarrassed

My brother recently came to stay with us, for about 3 weeks. And for 3 weeks I didn’t clean my room because I was afraid he’d make some sarcastic or judgemental comment while I carried the rubbish out. So for 3 weeks I lived in filth. I did not enjoy that, and while I was cleaning my room today after he left I thought to myself: “wait, I do things that embarrass me all the time, why is this special?”

And the long answer obviously has to do with the way that being a messy kid and having my cleanliness judged my whole life as a result has impacted my resilience to that kind of judgement, especially from someone who was there during said childhood.

But I don’t bring this up because my newsletter is suddenly a one sided psychology session. I bring this up because it reminded me of learning public speaking, learning a language, and role playing and what all 4 of these sources of my suffering have in common.

Most people start out hating public speaking. It’s embarrassing. You feel like everyone is watching you and judging you, and sometimes they genuinely are. Sometimes you train yourself rigorously out of that fear, through classes or therapy, or deliberate exposure. And sometimes you are forced out of your fear because suddenly your job is waiter at a restaurant with 5 fish of the day and an extensive and complex specials board and you have a 2 minute presentation to give 7 to 12 times a night 3 nights a week and so you just hold your breath and dive in, and the first few are shaky and awkward but within a few months the maître d' is commenting on how you are the most entertaining waiter in the restaurant when it comes to the specials.

OK that’s an extremely specific example, and also the world’s longest sentence. But the thing is, embarrassment, and self consciousness around public speaking and being perceived in public has in my life always been a problem of anxiety. I wasn’t scared of “public speaking” I was afraid that while public speaking somehow I would damage the relationships I had with the audience. That I would be wrong about something and damage my credibility or my reputation.

And I tell you what. Sometimes I was wrong about things, and I got things mixed up, or I stumbled over my words, or I blanked for a second. And you know what else? It never mattered. Long term, there wasn’t actually consequences for being a little wrong. So the anxiety eased. Failing a little helped me take bigger swings. I stopped writing elaborate notes for presentations at uni and stopped using note cards- instead I referred to the bullet points on my slides as I pointed to them, using them as jumping off points for spiels I wanted to go on. I became the most confident public speaker (and the worst prepared) in my class at university.

Then there’s language learning. I’ve taken a couple of language learning courses. I’m terrible at them. Not because I don’t love learning languages, because I do. But my speaking accent is terrible almost universally and when I tried to learn Mandarin I literally couldn’t hear, let alone reproduce, tones consistently or correctly. And it’s awkward and embarrassing and I wanted to melt into the floor telling my CHIN101 class about my birthday when I was 23. And then I heard a fun little story. I can’t vouch for the veracity of this, but someone told me that there’s not that much difference in brain plasticity between an adult and a child when it comes to language learning. But children aren’t as embarrassed, aren’t afraid to try, and don’t care that much when they get it wrong. The older and more self conscious you get the harder it is to learn to speak a new language, because you’re afraid to practice.

So what has this got to do with role playing?

When I was regularly playing with my kiwi friends, we’d run into this issue where nobody would want to do a voice, do an accent, or hold a conversation in character. We’d talk around conversations or skip them entirely. The whole “role playing” part of role playing games was basically written out by our awkwardness. It took one of our GMs deciding on a boring road trip to practice a funny Russian wizard who loves frogs, and just go all in on that character in the next session he ran, for us to start engaging on that level at all. Within a year or so, I could sometimes even approach an Irish accent in character as long as my buddy did one first so I could copy him.

And we had arguments in character! We made decisions in character! We had more fun! Because one guy got really really bored and decided that fuck it- he was going to do voices now.

Fun fact. he’d been watching a lot of critical role when he did this. It’s fun to dunk on them sometimes, and it’s important to know the difference between a reasonable workload for a normal GM and a full time GM, but the whole “your friends won’t do story arcs like that” I see trotted out sometimes regarding CR and other Actual Play is I think hinging on this idea that awkwardness in role play is inevitable unless you’re an actor. You know what acting is? It’s embarrassing yourself again and again and again pretending to be other people until pretending to be other people isn’t embarrassing anymore. Like for example, a waiter who has to do so much public speaking they get good just to keep themselves entertained. Or a child not yet knowing that it can be embarrassing to get something wrong.

So anyway. Do a silly voice next time you role play maybe! And I’m going to practice taking the rubbish out when I’m not home alone.

See you next Sunday x