Board Thread:Season 46 - Kariba/@comment-31148030-20180413203552/@comment-3418419-20180417013732

Hello, Drew! I've been thinking about what I wanted to say for this statement since you've posted it, and I think I've said everything I wanted to say. I apologize that it's messy, I didn't want to spend 30 minutes looking through my writing to try and make it perfect.

The first thing I want to say is that I've been dreading FTC since around the final 7. I knew that the way things were going I was going to end up here, with no chance, roasted by the jury. That last one is subjective but the other two things were definitely true. Actually, after I read the speeches I was completely demoralized and I didn't want to answer any of them. Gradually, I realized that I wouldn't be answering the speeches to explain why I should win, but what I would take from this experience. At that point, I felt the need to give an answer to everyone, even if their question was why my game was the best.

I guess you could call this a postmortem of my game, although I'm not exactly sure if that's the accurate term.

In my application, I said I was going to play a subdued game, waiting for the perfect time to strike (my quote wasn't shown in the cast reveal). I think we can all agree that my game was subdued, and it involved a lot of waiting. There were several moments throughout the game, going as far back as the final 11, where I thought to myself, "Oh man I completely blew my chance at winning!". Then my mind went back to, "Hey, maybe I can still salvage this!" It went back and forth, like a pendulum, throughout the entirety of the merge. I think I wrote a VL (it might have just been a normal confessional) about that. At the final 5, it swung back to "blew my chance" and it didn't swing back. A small part of myself hoped that maybe it actually had swung back, but I knew that it definitely didn't. My endgame decisions were motivated based off of the hope that it had.

From what I've read, it seems that my game had two main issues. I was too much of a follower, and I tried to embody characteristics which just don't fit me. The first issue seems easy to fix, since there were a few moments where I thought, "Hey, I think that now would be a good time to make a big move, I have a good idea for one too!" Then when I talked to people they wanted to go for the boring move (but it was better for them, but probably not for me). My biggest mistake was following them because I didn't want to make any waves in the game, even when I had immunity.

The other issue is a harder mistake to fix, but I'm sure I could figure out where I went wrong and correct my errors. A lot of it seemed to stem from my flawed gameplay, so if I fix that by becoming more confident then I won't feel the need to put on a facade that exudes confidence and which everyone probably saw through. This was the first game where I tried this approach, and I now know that it's not getting me anywhere. There's definitely things which I can do about my attitude, but I'm not exactly sure as to what I could do yet. I plan on taking a break from ORGs so I have time to figure that out, and because I'm feeling a little burned out (which I've been feeling since BAR started...only 9 days ago? It felt like a lifetime tbh)

Basically, when I had early success in the game and I wasn't completely terrible, it got into my head that I was a social mastermind (and compared to what I'm like in real life, I'd say I did incredible socially) (also, you can tell what I thought of myself by seeing what tribe I was placed on for BAR). If that wasn't the case, then it means that I'll have to work harder in the future, but there's not much improvement I can see in that regard. As far as I'm aware, the only things I could do to become better are to completely overcome my social anxiety which unfortunately prevented me from talking to some people, or become more interesting so that I have more things to talk about. Neither of those would happen overnight, which is another reason that I want to take an ORG break.

Strategically, I think I got it into my head that I was really terrible in that regard. Whether or not that's still true, I'm not really sure. It was that feeling combined with my social ability discussed above which led me to pursue a more social, under the radar type game. That's how I won Tal Survivor, so maybe it was going to work again? Nope, it seems that I only made it far in Tal Survivor because I trusted myself to make good strategic decisions. Somewhere along the way, that trust disappeared. It's kind of tragic, because the strategy was definitely my favourite part of Survivor. My number one wish for when I return to ORGs is to play a more assertive strategic game, because I believe that's well within my skillset.

It might seem like I've given up, but I still believe that there's something for me to gain from the experience.

As for my most fun moment, there are definitely a few that are up there. -The strategy surrounding the final eleven round was so exciting. It was the most intense round of gameplay I'd faced up to that point and I'd never felt more enjoyment from an ORG before as when I found myself as the swing vote with you. -My touchy subjects win felt very fulfilling, and it made me even more confident in my abilities as an ORG player. -I had several great conversations with a lot of players, and contrary to what I was expecting when I first got into ORGs, they might be my most treasured memory from this ORG. Really, the entire experience was a positive one for me (even the jury speeches and touchy subjects!), and one I'll enjoy looking back on for a long time.