Post-Con Stress
A friend posted how she sometimes finds herself stressed after a con, re-living any social gaffs she may have made.

I used to do the same thing. Not just in gaming. I used to get stressed out about how I handled all sorts of social situations after they were over. "Did I speak too much about myself?" "Did I seem unfriendly?" "Did I come off as a complete idiot?" They say we are own worst critics and I believe its true.

Why get upset with yourself about some little mistake you made? Do you have to be perfect? Does letting yourself get stressed change something that has already happened? Why do we do this?

First of all, we have to remember that mistakes made in a game aren't really that important. They are games. If you're stressing yourself out about them then you're missing the whole point. If you had fun and other had fun, then the game was a success. Second of all, if other people enjoyed gaming with you then they don't care if you mispoke or if your intro wasn't just right. Most people don't even notice the mistakes.

If you ever plan to GM, you'll want to quit torturing yourself about these things before then. When you GM you will make a lot more mistakes. There are just more opputunities to make mistakes. I could list tons of mistakes I made from the games I ran at ACN. At times I told characters how they feel. (A big no-no. A GM shouldn't ever do that. A GM should describe what the characters sense. Let the players decide what their characters feel. I know this and yet constantly catch myself breaking this GM rule.) I forgot to introduce important clues in to plots. My timing was off and I had to rush endings. The list goes on and on.

However, I'm not stressing about these mistakes. The con is over and I had a great time. My players seemed to enjoy the games despite all of my mistakes so I just make mental notes of things to do better in the future. It's bad enough I have to go back to work after a wonderful weekend of gaming. There's no reason for me to make it worse by stressing about how I spent that weekend.

Whatever mistakes I made as GM, player or just a person; they are in the past. No need to stress about them.