Personal Greetings / Olympics / Boring / Shy

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

Belated Happy Birthday to Betty.

Dismal_sentence is "back... temporarily... and feeling like I'm in a 
dismal sentence at the moment".  
.......... Catlady replies: Poor woobiekins, what's wrong? 

Drieux wrote:

> Ah, well...nice to think of restoring something like the original 
> purity of the Games, wasn't it?

Which purity was that? The *real* Olympics (in Greece, in worship of 
the Gods, no snow and ice sports) included events in composing paeans 
and performing epics, if you mean 'free of subjective aesthetic 
judgment'.

Neil wrote:

> I've spoken in meetings where people have gone to sleep right
> under my nose.

When I've fallen asleep in meetings, it usually has nothing to do with 
the speaker. I've fallen asleep even in very interesting archaeology 
lectures that I was really pissed to have missed. It has to do with 
sleep deficit and hypoglycemia.

Aberforth's Mike asked:

> is the kind of person who hangs out on this kind of list typically
> good at acting and public speaking but rather shy in direct 
> personal conversation??

Me, I am desperately helpless at acting, public speaking, anything 
that requires me to stand in front of an audience. So scared that 
I'm physically unable to squeak, let alone speak, y'know. I *can* ask 
a question from the audience, with pounding heart of fear and 
difficulty being loud enough to be heard at public lectures, with a 
relative comfort at department "all-hands" meetings. After 16 years
in this department, I know so *many* of the people one-on-one, 
including the big bosses, that I feel as I do in groups of friends.. 
well, 'friend' is a big word...

I mean, most of the people at work are *acquaintances', we don't 
hang out together socially, don't have interests or tastes in 
common outside work... Young Chang I dislike *intensely* ... but I've 
known these people for years and I am quite comfortable speaking with
them, individually or in smaller meetings (except I do feel some 
concern if the Department Head is in the meeting).

On the small-scale social level, I am as Catherine says she USED to 
be: "I used to insist that he would not leave me on my own, as I 
just didn't have the confidence to mix and mingle and talk to other 
people." As a teen, I used to try to drown my shyness in alcohol. 
Eventually I figured out that that was not having good results. Now I 
sit in a corner and watch the party (looking for people whom I 
know that I can cling to).

And, like invizible Amber, I feel differently about mailing lists 
than in person: "I love mailing lists. In real life, I have a 
difficult time speaking with people, particularly if they are 
strangers" but my reasons are somewhat different than hers. 

My reasons: for one, I quickly come to feel that I know (and am 
friends with!) the people whose posts I read, and I don't think about 
the lurkers.

For another, I'm hiding behind the written word, where no one can see 
my appearance (this does NOT help with telephones).

And there is a wall of time-delay protecting me (not in Chat), where 
if someone does say something very painful to me, maybe it will be 
less painful to my feelings because of not being said to my face, and 
certainly it will be less painful to my self-respect, because if it 
makes me cry, no one will see.