Thirteen Things about MissMeliss 13 Games I Love to Play Clue. It’s classic, and you can turn it into a light roleplaying game. Monopoly. Especially when I get to be the banker. What? No, I’m NOT hiding an extra $500 under the board! Scrabble. Because it’s all about those 50-point words, baby. Jeopardy. Trivia is so much fun. Zuma. There’s something Zen about making those colored balls explode. Woosh-Bong. An improv warm-up. Sort of like a virtual video game married to invisible pinball. (Every troupe uses their own variations – we have “Sheild” instead of “Denied,” for example.) Phase 10. Gin Rummy meets Uno. Much more fun than it sounds. Weffriddles. Granted, I got distracted around #58, and never went back, but it was amusing while I played it. What? It’s played in cars, mostly. The object is to avoid using the word “what” (or its equivalent in any known languages) while trying to get fellow players to use the word, during the course of a “normal” conversation. Rigmarole. It’s much like the improv game “Story,” except that the point is to actually tell a story to conclusion, and there’s no eliminations. A really good example of it can be found in the novel Little Women. The Sims, except I don’t really play it, as much as use it to release my inner psychopath, by finding new and extreme ways to kill my sims. My early favorite was to stick them in a swimming pool and remove the ladder, but I’ve branched out since then. And yes, I do name them after people who’ve pissed me off lately. Cranium. Charades, trivia, and purple clay, all wrapped up together. Much fun! Balderdash! The ultimate word game. Can be as complex as players care to make it. We generally throw away the board, and just use the cards.

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If there was a personal theme for the show last night, it was one of being out of focus. I wanted to be there, I wanted to play, but I just couldn’t focus. And then, I was terrified, not merely nervous, and I clammed up during 185, which is something I’ve been working on NOT doing. I just…couldn’t push past the fear.

It started with a soda can. I needed something fizzy to drink when I got to the arena, and bought a Coca-cola. I sipped about a third of it before getting distracted by something else. And then we started warm-up, but, like the wine-glass teetering on the edge of a table, that pulls focus from actors on stage, I was more worried someone would kick my soda can, than I was about the warm-up game. More than once another player chastised me – gently, and rightly so – for not being all there.

There’s this deep pressure in my brain that’s pushing me to break through some invisible barrier and figure out a way to release the sparky vivaciousness that’s always been a part of my personality, and that I keep repressing, but there’s also an equally insistent inner voice that reminds me I like to write about dark spooky things…and the clash between the two is getting harder to mediate. I’m 36 years old and I still don’t know who I am.

Clay and I talked about creative personalities and a sort of non-clinical bipolar effect that we all seem to have, where we’re either going non-stop, or sinking into misery and plodding doldrums. Sometimes, it just makes you want to chew a couple of lithium cells, or move to a foreign country.

Speaking of which, I’ve felt a very strong urge to really learn to speak and read French. I’ve always loved languages, I usually pick them up pretty quickly, and my smattering of French isn’t enough to achieve what I want to achieve these days.

Back to the show. Overall, it was good, but I’m not pulling my weight, and I KNOW better. I mean, intellectually, I get it. I just feel sort of…lost in translation.