...and sometimes he doesn't. Today's advice is worthless.

Letter writer: You've been playing a role amongst your friends for all these years, and now that role isn't welcome anymore. You fear that, by extension, you are not welcome either. You're right that a great deal of this is in your head. But friendships change, mature, thin out, sometimes die. You might be getting fewer invitations - your old friends may be tired of the old you.

So you reinvent yourself, don't you? No. You become yourself. You figure out what you got out of impressing all your friends with your crazy antics all these years. This may take therapy, but more likely, considering how self-aware you already sound, it'll just take some more deep thinking on your part. Some serious analysis of who you are, and who you are when you're with these sparkling friends who intimidate you, and how to bridge the gulf between those two worlds.

Your anxiety comes from fear of discovery - that no one will like the real you. But your real worry is how to like yourself. After that, everything else is a breeze.

Today's column was Cary at his most self-serving and pretentious, where he doesn't even begin to answer the question - just goes off on his own soulful tangents about his house repairs or the ballet he saw last night and how he feels about these things. It's great that you feel things so deeply, Cary, and that you're so introspective - have you heard of this thing called LiveJournal? Maybe you could put your poetry there and save column space for, you know, advice.

Could you be any more wonderful?

Come to Burning Man already. Bring couches.

When you were the life of the party, you were most likely covering up a part of your personality. Somehow your real, anxious personality is starting to seep out. Most likely this is because you have become more depressed and/or anxious than before for some reason. I know this because some of the language you have used is the exact same phrasing my boyfriend uses. He suffered a severe depression and is mostly recovered with medication, but he says that during the worst times, he always "felt everyone was thinking he was a jerk" and that even now at parties, he always "thinks it's his fault if the conversation is lagging or there's an awkward silence." Probably you need some good therapy. In the meantime, don't worry about being witty or making jokes. Practice good listening, and ask an occasional thoughtful question. Questions make the speakers feel good, and they make it look like you're participating. I hardly ever make jokes, for example, but since I don't have an anxiety problem, I don't worry about making conversation. Good luck.

I also get a charge when I can tell a funny story or make someone laugh. It's fun, a point scored for me. Oh wonderful me! However, I stop myself. Often. Especially when I'm feeling nervous (even around close friends), and listen. Really listen to who is talking. Let them be sparkling and brilliant. Laugh with them. Listen to what they're saying, respond, let them lead. Not just waiting for a break so you can get your oar in, but really listen. Tune in to someone other than yourself.

You'll learn something. Your friends will value you, perhaps without even knowing why. The best way to be fascinating is to be fascinated. Trouble is, you can't fake it, especially with your close friends.

If you value your friends, and it seems that you do, it's more important to keep them and be welcome with them than to score a point in some mental one-up-manship game that you have going on. Let them win, and enjoy them. For real.

I hardly think the point of this column is really advice in the sense of "this is how you get from point A to point B in your life." Honestly, I wouldn't read it if it were.

"So, you know, if the whole idea of being a sparking dinner guest itself just seems kind of lame and 19th century, like you should have a starched collar and knickers or something, you can turn being boring into an insidious and soul-killing form of quiet social homicide..." is easily the best piece of advice I've ever heard.

Wonderful stuff, Cary, you just made my day.

I have had this feeling too, usually after I get home from a party. Was I entertaining? Did I bore the pants off people? I think it is/ about fear, fear that we change as people over our lives and not necessarily change in ways we anticipate or like. We aren't the young sparkling wits we used to be, none of us are. I don't think you need therapy (the American panacea for all problems seems to be therapy, when often introspection would do). In your case, maybe a little less introspection would do.

Why not initiate a conversation with them about getting older and changing (you don't need to tell them you have a crippling fear that they will desert you) You may find they have similar fears; be tentative and ginger and, if they don't take the bait drop it. If they do, you may be surprised to learn that they feel exactly the same way you do.

I've thought over the past few years that one of the biggest, and most unexpected, boons of growing older was a decreasing interest on my part what other people think of me. The better I know myself, bumps and warts included, the less I am concerned about them being found out by others. I'm sure there are little traits and major flaws that are glaringly visible in my character, but gee, I just don't seem to be as bothered by them now that I know their shapes and approximate sizes. I figure anyone who has hung around me long enough has probably noticed, too, and if they're still my friends, then there's not much to worry about. Actually, close friends probably noticed the advantages and flaws long before I did.

In my unsolicitied and purely subjective view, the LW in this case needs to look at why he frets that people he considers close friends know him so little that they would boot him when the laughter stops. He seems to me, in a rather adolescent manner, to be focused entirely on what people think of him, rather than who he really is. People already know who he is (and if they don't after all these years, then that's a sign of sociopathic posturing and someone like that wouldn't be writing Cary for advice).

Relax, LW. Your friends like you for who you are. Pay attention to them, enjoy their company, and be your good old, antic-loving, boring, neurotic self. That's why they keep inviting you to parties.

And if you are bored with your old antics, then stop them. It won't change who you are.