Watched both of them. There's the general imperfections that come from not being a progamer and there's only so much you can do about handspeed and multitasking (though I think if you make it a priority to focus like hell then you can wind up with a much crisper first 5-8 minutes).
In the one you lost on cross spots, there was one huge tactical decision that was the turning point. You kill his initial gateway push, including all his sentries, which cost a billion gas and are the key to a protoss army before collosi/storm gets out. Checking the unit and production tabs...
You have:
* 8 roaches (with +1 attack)
* 19 speedlings
* 14 more speedlings in production
He has:
* Literally only probes and no other units
At this point, you wait 30 seconds then send just the lings at his third location. You get him to cancel his Nexus, but because cannons are warping in and he just got a round of stalkers you have to retreat and he restarts it. If you had just immediately waypointed everything, including the eggs, to his third then you could have shut it down for a lot longer.
This might seem really specific to that game and based on stuff you couldn't have known, but it works as general advice. In many, many games toss will do some sort of attack at 8-10 minutes. If you smash that attack, then remember that was his whole army. Even if he's immediately getting a round of warp-ins at home that's not enough to secure a third. So immediately (IMMEDIATELY) send your army to his third to make sure he's not sneaking it in. Make this a rule.
I think it's a symptom of playing scared and responding to what you think your opponent might be able to do. I noticed that game you were taking expansions late, putting up a ton of static defense, and getting corruptors before the robo support bay had been started (which made my heart hurt a bit). It's easy to get into that mentality, especially playing as zerg, but gradually you should get a better sense of what your opponent is actually capable of at that specific point in the game and get more comfortable with putting on aggression yourself.
You ever got muta ZvP?
