Shyness

One of the things people often find hard to believe is that I am shy. In fact, painfully so. I find it virtually impossible to get to know new people – hence the fact most of my friends are current and former colleagues and school-friends. After a few months trapped in a room with you I suppose I might just begin to make an effort ;-)

Conversely if given a context, or if I’m working from a position of experience I am generally fine. So, say, giving a presentation on something I know about to a room full of strangers is no problem whatever. Propositioning someone online with scenario X for the purposes of outcome Y presents no difficulty.

Nevertheless, going up to a stranger in a club or bar or... and explaining (in not so many words) that I think they are attractive and so I would like to get to know them better to see if at some point our clothes fall off and/or we fall in love: well, that fills me with dread.

This is a pity, because it means that I am restricted to online searches for Mr Right rather than spying him out on the dancefloor or whatever. It is especially a pity when you consider my office is awash with Frumpella-friendly eye-candy, with whom I have no real opportunity to interact on a day to day basis.

Perhaps my overreliance on online dating and cruising perpetuates the very symptoms I am complaining about. Ironically my computer, the very one on which this and all other blog posts have been composed, is on its last legs and spent much of the weekend being rebuilt and coaxed into a semblance of life. Thus I was cut off from all the gayers in Strumpetville.

What would I have done? I have no skills or resources for *gulp* the real world! Looks like I need to go out there and meet some honest to goodness fellas to see if fun and frolics might be had…

My secret fear, after all of this , is that I am not shy but dull: dull, dull dull. Too uninteresting and grey to be anything other than the wallflower I deserve to be. But overall there is little one way or another I can do but try. Double plus *gulp*.

I saw friends tonight on Das Boot and explained to them, as best I could, how ill at ease I have been this last few weeks. It’s all about missing International, and bad dates, and feeling frumpy, and family things and not having a holiday for a long time and… Well, I feel things need to change. Somehow. Get under a man by getting over myself? It’s an approach gentle reader!