#oneaday Day 889: A thoroughly agreeable evening

Spent the evening with some old friends I haven't seen for ages — and I get the impression that despite us all being in a group chat together, they hadn't just hung out with one another for an evening for some time, either. So not only did I have a pleasant evening, I also feel like I did a certain amount of good by bringing people together.

It was a pretty simple evening, nothing fancy, and definitely no getting absolutely hammered like in years gone by. I did drink two large bottles of Smirnoff Ice, however, and didn't really feel much effect. Disappointing? Perhaps, but getting plastered was not the objective for the evening. It would have probably been inadvisable, even, given the fact I have to be up early for tomorrow's happenings.

We just hung out like it was old times, and it was like the last 20+ years had never passed. We played video games, we stayed up too late, we had conversations far too offensive to print here. This is good. This is exactly what I needed. This is what I have been missing for a frustratingly long period of time.

There's this assumption that you "grow out" of childish things, but if this evening proved one thing, it's that you absolutely do not have to — even if you're married, as two of the three of us are, and even if you have kids, as one of us does. (If you'd asked me which one of us was the most likely to have kids 20 years ago, it would not have been the one who now does have kids, but life rarely goes the way you expect, as both bitter and sweet experiences over the years have taught me.)

One interesting side-effect of the evening is that, having been re-watching a lot of the Game Grumps Super Mario Maker series recently, I thought I would introduce my friends to Super Mario Maker 2. I am normally not a big fan of the absurdly difficult levels — I even wrote about how I dislike how so much of that game's culture revolves around super-hard levels — but attempting (and eventually succeeding!) at beating a particularly troublesome level this evening formed a nice centrepiece for the other activities.

One of my friends was also a big fan of the Street Fighter edition Evercade Alpha, so I may have made a sale there. Even if not, he seemed to have a blast playing through Champion Edition over the course of the evening.

So all in all, this evening was pretty much everything I hoped it would be, and now I am heading to bed, far too late to be practical for an early start tomorrow, feeling more content and happy than I have done for quite some time.

Almost like you should do this sort of thing more often. Who'd have thought it?!

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#oneaday Day 886: Non-celebratory party

When times feel bleak and difficult, it is sometimes nice to retreat into the past in your own way, and think about some enjoyable or at least interesting times you remember fondly. For me, some of the most memorable occasions in my Past Life involved parties.

Growing up, as a kid, I always worked on the sort of assumption that a "party" was a celebratory thing you did when there was a particular occasion to… well, celebrate. Usually a birthday. I remember several birthday parties I attended as a child, usually at the "Reading Room" in the village, and they typically involved playing Pass the Parcel, that weird game where you had to put on a coat, scarf and hat and then eat a chocolate bar with a knife and fork, and, on a couple of occasions, actual entertainers. This kind of party I associate with cake, for probably obvious reasons.

As you get a bit older, though, the "celebration" bit of parties fades in favour of it simply being a "social gathering" of sorts. I must confess I still have the somewhat childish definition in my head whenever I hear the word "party", but, of course, I have experienced non-celebratory parties on a number of occasions in the past.

A lot of these occasions from my university days sort of blur into one another at this point, because the non-celebratory party, in my experience, tended to be an occasion with one primary activity: drinking until your brain spontaneously combusted. As such, many of my memories of parties from that period are somewhat fragmented, and I'm not sure what happened at which party. I guess it doesn't matter all that much; all that really does matter is that the experience happened, and I, for one reason or another, happen to remember it.

One party I do remember with a certain degree of specificity is an occasion when we, for some reason, ended up around at "Geography Beki's" house. I didn't know Geography Beki well — she was a classmate of one of my friends, so I had encountered her a couple of times, but not to any degree beyond "passing acquaintance" — but somehow everyone from my immediate friendship group ended up attending this party.

As parties went, it was relatively unremarkable, as I recall. The highlight of the evening was getting slowly more and more drunk in someone's bedroom, repeatedly listening to one track on Moby's Play album, because one of our number kept yelling "TRACK FIVE!" every time track five came to its conclusion. I say "highlight" of the evening; what I really mean is "this is the only thing I really remember in any great detail".

Another party I remember in somewhat blurry detail is one where I'm not even sure whose house it was or what I was doing there; my sole recollection of it was someone — possibly me, though I'm not even entirely sure of that — being sick out of a bedroom window and onto the corrugated plastic roof of the conservatory below. I believe a mop was hung out of the window in an attempt to get rid of the worst of the mess before it became a permanent feature on the rooftop.

Thinking about it, this may have been the same party at which two of my friends, each of whom were attending some form of martial arts club at the university, decided to try some moves on one another, and it escalated into at least one of the pair taking things rather more seriously than the event warranted. I recall the friend in question having an oddly furious look on their face, while the other just looked sort of bemused and amused at what was unfolding. It ended without any permanent damage happening to either of them.

These little events are all minor, stupid things, but I remember those moments oddly vividly, more than 20 years later in many cases. I don't really know why, either; I wouldn't describe them as particularly noteworthy incidents and definitely not things that went on to shape who I am today. But I do sort of miss them; I do sort of miss the normality of a whole bunch of people bundling around someone's house for no other reason than 1) it gave them somewhere out of the ordinary to get plastered and 2) perhaps to hang out with people whose company they could, at the very least, tolerate.

I don't know if I could handle a party like that these days. Probably not; as a socially anxious person, I often didn't handle those parties back then in the best way, and that social anxiety has only developed as I've got older and the Way The World Is has just pushed us all further apart from one another. But I still sort of miss them. If I could go back, I would probably try and enjoy those occasions a little more; evidently something about those times has remained precious enough to me to remember them for this long.

But anyway. I guess my meetup with my friends on Friday is going to be an extremely small-scale non-celebratory party of sorts. Except the only people in attendance are people I know and like. Sounds like an ideal solution to me!

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#oneaday Day 883: Just like old times... hopefully

I have the coming week off work. I am going to spend most of it just chilling and relaxing, because it's been an intense, stressful few months for various reasons, but towards the end of the time I am doing a few things: stopping by to visit my parents, attending the Retro Computer Festival at the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge (I will be bringing Evercades of various descriptions, though I will not be there in a "professional" capacity, just as an enthusiast), and, arguably most importantly in my head, I am seeing a couple of friends from my school days that I haven't seen for a good few years at this point.

This little encounter is actually quite important to me, because as those of you who know me reasonably well will probably know, I have had some… difficult experiences with people I thought were my friends of late, and that has left me feeling rather depressed, distrustful and hesitant to "let people in" — or perhaps to open myself up, to put it another way. It is something that, unsurprisingly, I have talked about a lot at therapy. Over the course of those discussions it has become clear — well, even clearer than it was — that I have been hurt by those experiences, and that, in turn, has left me feeling lonely, not great about myself generally, and somewhat adrift in terms of just… having people to hang out with.

I don't ask for much from friendships: just some people that I can see every so often, share some good times with and, ideally, share in the experience of the hobbies that we have always found enjoyable together. A willing ear during turbulent times is helpful, but to be honest, it's the first bit that I most keenly feel the absence of in my life right now; I just want to be able to share the things I love — and that, in some cases, I am proud to have been part of — with people I care about. Some of my fondest memories from the years and decades gone by are not big, huge, exciting events, but times I spent at someone's house, just hanging out, possibly intoxicating ourselves via various means, playing video games and making stupid jokes together. These days I can live without the intoxication part, but the other bits I really miss.

Which is why I'm quietly excited about this little meet-up that is happening next week. It's just a couple of friends and, again, we're not doing anything big: just piling around someone's house, hanging out, playing some games and probably having a few drinks. It will be the first time I have done this with people I regard as "old friends" for quite a long time; my wife and I have been enjoying playing some HeroQuest with a mutual friend (someone she knew and introduced me to, who has now become a "shared friend", as it were), so it's not as if I've been completely without social contact, but that has been an occasional thing up until now. (That reminds me; I should probably arrange the next session of that.)

I don't know what the evening will hold. I'm hoping to introduce my friends to the stuff I've been doing with Evercade, firstly because it's stuff I'm super-proud to have worked on, but also (mainly) because there's a bunch of multiplayer stuff, particularly from among the NEOGEO cartridges, that I think it would be fun to spend some time with — and I get the chance so rarely to be able to actually play this stuff with other people that I'm really excited about the possibility. I can see Doom going down particularly well. The Instagib mode we added is insanely fun and the only chance I've had to play it was when we were testing it in the office!

But anyway. Spend some time with the people you have, in the past, called your "friends". Just drop them a text or something if you don't have the time to hang out. I can guarantee they'll appreciate it.

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#oneaday Day 799: The exhausting town square

Social media was often positioned to us as being like a "global town square", where people from all walks of life and backgrounds could come together and argue about who was the best girl in Evangelion. Over time, I think we can say that experiment… hasn't exactly worked quite as intended.

I mean, sure. I won't deny that my various dalliances with social media — particularly the "public-facing" kind such as Twitter (as it was before… what it is now) and Bluesky — have exposed me to people I might not have otherwise had the opportunity to get to know, and even allowed me to make some friends… I think, anyway.

But sometimes I find myself wondering if there's a reason I might not have come into contact with certain types of people were it not for the "global town square" nature of public-facing social media. I am starting to feel, looking at my Bluesky feed, like I felt when I first fell out of love with Twitter. It feels less about the conversation, sharing and making new friends, and more about performatively saying the right things in order to ensure that you are seen as a "good person" with the "correct" opinions. And I'm really fuckin' tired of that shit.

I won't go into specific examples right now, because that will date this post immediately — plus I'm not altogether keen in getting embroiled in the current "discussions", however indirectly — but suffice it to say for the moment that as soon as you start feeling genuine trepidation about saying certain things, lest the Mob pounce on you for something you might not have actually intended from what you said, then that's the time you should probably start thinking about how you are using social media, and how you might be able to make it better for yourself.

The simple answer is, of course, mute, unfollow or even block the people who are making you feel that way. On Bluesky in particular, the "nuclear block" function means that it is hard (though not impossible) for anyone you have blocked to check up on what you are saying. But on the other hand, I feel like blocking sends a certain message that perhaps isn't exactly what you intend; there's an inherent message of disapproval to it that might not be what you want to say; the same is true for unfollowing, to an arguably slightly lesser extent.

Probably the subtlest approach you can take is just to mute someone who is irritating you, but who you don't particularly want to send that message of disapproval to by blocking them. No-one knows when you've muted them, and you don't see their posts come up in your feed; you may, however, see that there have been posts from accounts you have muted, and the temptation is always to click that thing to see exactly what people have been saying. It's rarely anything worthwhile, and yet still we click. We always must click.

The trouble I find is that a lot of the absolute most insufferable people on social media are also people that I originally followed because I'm interested in the thing that their account suggested was their main interest! But at some point you have to ask the question: "am I still following this person out of a sense of obligation or the increasingly vain hope that they will post about the thing I followed them for, or because I want to see what they are actually posting on an hourly basis?" If the answer is the former, unfollowing or muting them is probably a good idea. Particularly if they aren't following you, in which case they probably won't even notice your absence.

But then that can, itself, be a bit disheartening. It can sometimes be frustrating to post something that I've worked hard on over on Bluesky and it seemingly pass by completely unnoticed, and then post some inane throwaway reply to someone about AI boosters being garbage people and get non-stop notifications of people liking and reposting that ultimately meaningless message for the next three days.

I think I'm just not built for social media. But, paradoxically, it's one of the only means I feel like I have of being able to connect with other people these days. And it sucks that it's that way. The alternative is just being alone, and I don't really want to do that — because I feel like I've proven beyond a doubt over the course of the last few years that if I just disappear quietly, absolutely no-one seems to notice or gives a shit.

And so, ever onward, until the end of time, I Post. Not because I want to, or because I enjoy it, but because I feel like I have to; like that is the only option to prove one's existence.

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#oneaday Day 553: Cream crackered

I am lying on the prison-like bed of a Travelodge somewhere in deepest, darkest Kings Cross, and I am absolutely exhausted. As noted yesterday, today was our Work Christmas Do, and as anticipated, I have bowed out of proceedings before the evening drinking in a bar because I absolutely could not even contemplate spending any time whatsoever in a busy, noisy London bar right now. We spent about half an hour in one while waiting for our dinner reservations earlier, and that nearly made me want to run away screaming, so voluntarily subjecting myself to more of that is firmly off the table.

The rest of the day has been good fun though! Monopoly Life-Sized was quite entertaining, though also subject to Overeager Forced Fun from the staff. I can't blame them for that, though; it's almost certainly drummed into them that they have to be high energy at all times, even if it is patently obvious that the grumpy middle-aged group in attendance is very much Not Up For dancing, chanting and shouting.

The game itself was enjoyable, if a little chaotic. We had four teams, three of which consisted of our group and the fourth was a bewildered looking couple who got lumbered with us. Each turn, two teams got to roll a die and move around the giant (but hugely condensed) Monopoly board, while the other two got a "Strategy" turn, where they could either build a house or hotel on a property they owned, or take on a challenge to earn a bit of in-game cash.

When landing on an unowned property, the team had to go into a little cubicle behind the "space" and complete a challenge to take ownership of it; these varied enormously, including a bar billiards-esque ball-rolling game, a cooperative rhythm game, frantically pedalling an exercise bike at arm level, and various puzzles. There was a lot of variety, and the games were fun, if quite easy for the most part.

Building a house or hotel, meanwhile, tasked you with assembling a Tangram-like puzzle in the shape of a Monopoly house piece. The "community chest" challenges were mostly puzzles themed around various well-known Monopoly cards, though they included both mental and skill-based challenges.

All in all, it was a good time, though the game attendants were a little too willing to "cheat" on your behalf in order to ensure no-one spent too much time "failing". This felt a bit patronising, but again, it's probably in their "script".

For dinner, we went to a steak specialist restaurant, and most of us had, of course, steak. It was really good, and the bread and butter pudding dessert was also delicious. I was absolutely ready to call it a night by the time we were done there, though, so here I am now.

I think I'm mostly over "going out" — particularly going out for drinks. The brief period we spent in a Leicester Square pub prior to dinner was actual hell for me — thankfully, there was an outside area, and I even managed to get a seat before too long. Much needed, as the entire Monopoly thing had been standing up, and I was very tired.

Anyway, like I say, it's been a mostly pleasant evening aside from all the walking and that brief period in the pub, so I'm glad I came along. I am very much looking forward to getting home tomorrow, though.

1876: Connecting Flight

Good morning from Dublin! Today has been a very long day. Technically it's already "tomorrow" but I haven't yet made it home from Boston (my connecting flight leaves in a couple of hours) so I thought I'd take the opportunity to scribble a quick post.

This PAX weekend has been pretty much everything I hoped it would be. I had a great time with my friends, I saw some cool stuff at the show and I picked up some fun swag.

Most importantly, we successfully carried a number of formerly Internet-only relationships into the offline realm. Doing this is always a nerve-wracking experience — regardless of whether said relationship is platonic, romantic or anything else — and so it's always a pleasure when things come together and we all get along.

I actually wasn't too worried this time around, though. Something brought us all together in the world of Final Fantasy XIV and the fact most of us have been together for nigh on two years now says something positive about us and what we mean to one another. There have been tough times, as with any relationship, and people have come and gone over time, but the people with whom I spent my weekend represent a core group that I have always very much enjoyed spending virtual time with — and it turns out I enjoy spending real time with, too. It's just a pity we're all so scattered.

"I'm glad everyone is exactly how they seem to be," said one of our number last night, possibly slightly fuelled by a beer or two. "It means that everyone's genuine. And that we're all as fucked up as each other."

That latter point is key, and not necessarily a bad thing. Almost without exception, we've all had Shit to Deal With to varying degrees over the years, and our adventures in Eorzea have provided not only some much-needed escape at times, but also an outlet through which we can talk about the things that have been bothering us with like-minded individuals.

And that is immeasurably valuable; in an age where it seems people are drifting further and further apart from one another for various reasons, it's comforting to have a group that is pretty much always there for you. I know I'm grateful for these friends, and I'm sure they are too.

Now coffee is calling, closely followed by a connecting flight, a taxi ride back home and then almost straight back out (hopefully with time for a shower first!) to go and teach clarinet to kids. It's all go, huh. I shall sleep well tonight, for sure.

1838: Friday Night

Not really sure what to write about today, to be perfectly honest. All in all, aside from the motivating weight loss I successfully achieved the other day, it's been a fairly shitty week all round. I won't bore you with the reasons, but suffice to say it's been rubbish and crap throughout, and I'm glad that I now have a weekend to (hopefully) enjoy before a new week begins and hopefully continues somewhat better than the last.

Played a bit of Final Fantasy XIV earlier and had the pleasure of playing alongside some players I've got to know via Twitter recently. This is, I think, the first time I've really spent much time hanging out with people outside the "Free Company" I've been a member of since the beta version launched back in 2013, and it's been pleasant.

It's also been interesting how this little social circle has expanded quite quickly in the last couple of weeks. I initially met "Farah Maxwell" (character name, not real name) when I heard about the tragic passing of an FFXIV player, and participated in an emotional (virtual) beachside vigil to pay my respects to the fallen. We stayed in touch via Twitter after that, however — it was Twitter that made me aware of the event in the first place, since Farah had been tweeting about it — and I gradually started to get to know a few other members of this group, including one who runs an immensely entertaining (if you're an FFXIV player, anyway) account highlighting the hilarious, bizarre and rude things some players put in the game's "Party Finder" system, essentially a bulletin board allowing you to recruit members to help out with pretty much anything the game has to offer.

Coincidentally, one of the people I got to know through this group was someone I'd seen around during the game's "Hunt" system, whereby large monsters occasionally spawn in various areas and large groups of players promptly dogpile them and kill them considerably quicker than I imagine the developers intended. Their character, one "Emi Katapow", had caught my eye for one reason or another, though I forget exactly why now: perhaps it was their wearing of the yukata costume, which was once my character's attire of choice; or perhaps it was the fact that in my brief encounter with them at the time, they seemed like a nice person. FFXIV's community is, on the whole, pretty good — with a few exceptions — but pleasant people to be around still stand out somewhat.

It so happened that Farah and Emi were both online this evening, so I had the opportunity to play a little with them, accompanied by a number of Free Company-mates who came along for the ride. We tackled "Turn 7", aka The Second Coil of Bahamut, Turn 2, and failed miserably to defeat it, but we had some fun regardless; even with the lowered difficulty of this encounter, it can still be a challenge to make it through successfully, particularly if you're with an unfamiliar group that you might not have run with before. No-one seemed to mind that we didn't clear, though; for many, getting a full group together to challenge Coil is a seemingly insurmountable challenge unless you have a "static" — a group of people who meet regularly specifically to take on this difficult content — and so our little failed trip into Melusine's lair may have provided a rare opportunity for some of our number to try their hand at some of the toughest fights FFXIV has to offer.

Anyway. Even with the enjoyment of earlier, I'm still feeling a bit shitty about the week just gone by, and so I'm headed in a bedwardsly direction. I plan on sleeping in tomorrow and doing absolutely nothing of note all weekend. That sounds like a fine idea right now.

1779: A Quiet Night In After a Night Out

I've pretty much come to accept by now that I don't really "do" big social occasions. And by this I mean that I generally don't have a lot of desire to "go out" in the sense that people tend to use the non-specific phrase "go out" — that is to say, going to a pub, sitting and drinking and not really doing anything interesting or exciting.

It was my work Christmas meal this evening. Andie and I both went along and we had an enjoyable time. The food was very nice, the home-made cakes for dessert were frankly ridiculous in size (the entire cake was literally the size of an average human head, and a single slice offered roughly as much "cake" as you would get in about ten normal-sized slices anywhere else) and the entertainments laid on by two of my colleagues, who had clearly spent a significant amount of time planning the evening together, were fun.

Once all that finished, though, and we were into the "freeform" part of the evening — the part where you're supposed to lounge around, sip your drink and make small talk with the people around you — I felt absolutely no desire to stick around whatsoever, and neither did Andie, so we made our excuses, headed back home and were safely in our own house with the heating on well before 9pm.

I'll hasten to add at this point that our lack of desire to stick around for the "freeform socialising" that follows more organised and/or structured fun was nothing to do with the people we were with. On the contrary, I like my colleagues very much: I enjoy working alongside them, I have a decent relationship with them in that we can chat about stuff other than work as well as have a good old complain about whatever has gone wrong with our respective jobs (95% of the time through no fault of our own) to a sympathetic ear, and I do enjoy having the opportunity to go out and socialise with them outside the office, which can, as anyone who has worked in a large corporation will be able to attest, feel somewhat oppressive at times.

No, my desire to scarper after the meal and the activities were done was more to do with the fact that I simply don't find socialising for socialising's sake to be very fun or enjoyable. In fact, in most cases, I find it to be the exact opposite of fun and enjoyable: a feeling of anxiety starts to build up in my mind as I subconsciously count the seconds of silence that have elapsed between me and the person standing closest to me, and I start running through potential conversations in my mind before rejecting all of them on the grounds that they might make me sound like I'm "trying too hard". Ultimately, I tend to just end up sitting in a corner feeling thoroughly miserable and, frankly, why would you voluntarily put yourself through that when the door is right there?

Socialising with a purpose, though? I'm fine. I love a board game evening or an afternoon of Mario Kart with friends. I enjoy a post-performance meal after a show that we've all participated in — though it's been a good few years since one of these now. In other words, I appreciate opportunities to socialise where there are things to do — enjoyable things, that is — in lieu of unmemorable, instantly forgotten small-talk, and likewise I appreciate opportunities to socialise where there are ready-made conversational topics like "how did the show go?" or "we sure showed that giant plant monster who's boss, huh?"

I've come to accept this part of myself over the years. I just worry a bit at times that other people might not be quite so understanding.

1299: It's Four O'Clock in the Morning

Good morning! I've just got in. (Well, I got in about half an hour ago, but whatever.)

I've been "out" this evening. I recall writing a post a while back about how I don't really "go out" any more in the way I used to — that's "go out" in the sense of "going somewhere to imbibe a lot of alcoholic beverages then stumble somewhere you probably won't remember in the morning." And yet this evening I found myself doing almost exactly that. (The only part lacking was the "lot of alcoholic beverages", since I was driving.)

It was my friend James' stag night this evening, you see — an event which is continuing over the weekend. This evening was intended to be a fairly conventional night out — a nice meal, then maybe a couple of drinks somewhere, then back home in preparation for other stuff tomorrow. Since we're all considerably older than we used to be, we weren't particularly intending on doing anything "big" or time-consuming like clubbing, but somehow here I am at nearly 4am having just rolled in from what ended up being a rather long night.

The specifics? Not a chance. What happens on the stag night stays on the stag night and all that.

Suffice to say, though, I was surprised how much I ended up enjoying myself, and it was largely down to two things: the company, who were pleasingly laid back for the whole evening, and the venues, which, while hastily chosen in all cases apart from the restaurant we'd booked, turned out to be entertaining, pleasant places to hang out. And by that — yes, I'm aware how old I sound when I say this — I mean they were places where you could actually hold a conversation with the people you were with, rather than having to bellow small talk into each other's ears — something which I always find to be embarrassing and surprisingly exhausting.

On the whole, I think James had an eminently suitable start to his stag night, weekend, whatever you want to call it. The evening took a few twists and turns I don't think any of us were expecting when we started, and I think everyone had a good time. I also think most people involved were surprised that we all still had what turned out to be a lengthy night out in us — it's nice to know that we're perhaps not as decrepit as we might have perhaps thought we were.

I do quite urgently need to sleep now, though, despite the amount of Coke I've imbibed over the course of the evening. I can have a lie-in tomorrow morning, at least, then it's Doing Stuff that is Probably a Little More Sedate Than This Evening tomorrow afternoon and evening. For now, adieu.

#oneaday Day 137: Say My Name, Bitch

I have something of a — what — phobia? I'm not sure it's that serious, but I have something of a thing about saying people's names, for some inexplicable reason. It might be something to do with the fact that I never really liked my own name or the way my voice pronounced it when I was a kid (hence my habitual shortening of it to "Pete" everywhere in the world these days) or it might just be one of my many strange and inexplicable neuroses.

I can't even pin down why I sometimes find it difficult to say the name of the person who is standing right in front of me and who, in most cases, I know quite well. Perhaps I worry I'll mispronounce it (granted, it's kind of hard to mispronounce most of the names of people I know, though I have no idea how to say the surnames "Ohle" or "Honea" to this day and worry if I ever meet the people in question face to face I'll pick the wrong possibility and make a big tit of myself) or perhaps I just think that someone's name is somehow a window on their soul, a piece of their person that is, well, personal.

I don't mind people calling me by name, though, that's the weird thing. And I'm aware it's silly to feel odd about saying other people's names — particularly if you're calling out for someone. "Hey! You!" really doesn't cut it in a room full of people — although to be honest, I've never really been one for calling out anyway, as I generally much prefer to just go over to the person in question and speak to them, as yelling just draws attention to 1) you and 2) the person you're yelling at, who may not be grateful for the attention.

Of course, it's easy to go the other way and start calling people by their name far too much. Then it gets a bit weird, people start raising their eyebrows and wondering why you're "acting suspiciously". Saying someone's name too much is often seen as a sign of guilt, like you're trying to avoid accidentally referring to the person as someone else, like an ex, or a hilariously deformed person you saw on TV that you can't get out of your head while you look at your friend, however awful a person that makes you.

Maybe it, like so many socialisation things, is something you just need to practice a bit. It is, after all, one of the things about "growing up" — the moment when you stop calling adults "Steven's mum" or "Mrs. Stevenson" and start calling them "Geoff". (Steven's mum's parents didn't like her much.) Perhaps there's still some sort of residual hang-up in my mind about that, like so many things.

Ah well. One more to add to the list.