I never suspected such a thing existed before I found a thread on this very forum linking to http://senseis.xmp.net/?OnlineGoAnxiety. Somehow, reading a description of my problem helped me shed light on it, and hopefully fight it. To summarize my case, I do not really mind losing (even OTB against a human I can "feel"), but I feel really humiliated and stupid when I take a beating out of a human whose thoughts, intentions, and history are alien to me. I guess I am also bothered by the fact that there is a trace of it for everyone to see forever. That might not have been such a problem, had I not been for some reason dedicated to KGS. The social interaction game visualization, history analysis tools make it the worst place for someone like me. Therefore, OGA took me in its grip, I never actually played and lost interest, naturally.
Understanding the roots of this OGA made me take interest in IGS actually, with its bare functionality, private and user-unfriendly rank graphs and game history, absence of communication in the rooms. There, everyone is so mute and anonymous that it is almost as if I was not playing a human being, and I am so much more comfortable for it. IGS has several other advantages for a player my level: automatch is instantaneous, and the Beginner Class prevents you from feeling any rank consciousness anxiety, since you cannot drop any lower, and that given time and enough luch you WILL end up promoting
I own a few books of the elementary go series, and enjoy studying them, I also do my daily tsumego with the Wbaduk client, but if I understand correctly, playing is of utmost importance for progress.
As far as my targets are concerned with go, I would really just like to improve because I have the hope that improving enables you to appreciate the beauty of the game more, and that's what I am after mainly. I also need, naturally, to keep my OGA under control.
This is where this journal comes into play - I hope to make it one of the tools which will help me fight OGA, by commiting to report on actual games regularly. I also hope, of course, to get valuable input from your part, if you are so kind and comment so of my so many weak moves. Some other goals I would like to reach with this journal are to get to know some fellow players from this forum, so that I could play them comfortably online. Finally, if my journey can inspire some other OGA sufferers lurking out there as i was, that will be more than enough satisfaction for me!