Chris

http://poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/friend-request/

I have such massive amounts of anxiety around individual people. I can tweet to folk, and I can comment with folk on other blogs, but responding to comments? Replying to email? Being on chat? Fuck, may as well get me to do public speaking.

This makes it so I don't really interact with people much outside of work. (And the cyborg collective at home, of course.) I possibly could be closer with people at work, except anxiety. I possibly could reconnect with folk in Boston, in Portland, in wherever the hell I've lived, except anxiety. What if I'm too intense? Or too standoffish? Or I'm boring and no one will tell me? Or I miss social cues and then I'm weird in that avoiding kind of way? Or I am actively on fire and setting fire to their furniture and they're too polite to tell me? Or I can't escape?

I had two friends reach out to me at the beginning of this year, and it was lovely chatting with them, and now it's my turn to initiate contact with them to show that I care, and... I do, I really do, I just don't know what the hell I'm doing. And what if my clumsiness ruins everything. I would apparently rather hide in a hole than keep up with people I care about because what if I hurt them by me being me?

(Shit, I can't even respond to direct requests for information from random people on Wikia. I do not exaggerate.)

So instead, I sit at home with a full inbox and not-replied-to comments, and I work, and I plan for future!Kid, and I do what I do. Maybe later I'll try that whole Being Brave thing and try reaching out.

People I've met or spent time with, apart from savorie and djdigit:

* traumentwerfer, who went with us to the Muse concert, and who is a really nice, bad, terrible, awful man.  In no order.

* vvvexation, who I have seen around, usually in rosefox's journal, and who I completely and utterly could not have predicted I'd meet.  I approve, naturellemente.

* pecunium -- v. nice, kind of quiet.

* nancyblue, who is just as wonderful as I expected, based on what I know of her via her journal.

* roadriverrail, who I hugged before he knew I was me, which was v. entertaining.

* harlequinaide, who is a total bastard.  In fact, I disliked him so much, I crashed at his place in San Francisco, and we spent all this morning and afternoon catching up.

* shaix -- v. nice, and I really wish we'd had more time to natter.

It's entirely likely I have missed folk.  Have I missed folk?