Aug 31, 2007

Last night, Kendra and Brendan invited me out to Bleu to meet a coworker, Aric and his wife, Cherie. He's a well-read, activity-focused editor for Amazon, she has rapier-sharp wit and a knack with words to the point where she's a highly-proclaimed author. She has a large following and I'm assuming he does as well, considering how engrossing his blogs are. It felt good just to be in their presence.

I do not understand how to live life for myself.

I'm so afraid of what other people think that I never challenge myself, I focus my energies into characteristics and abilities that come naturally and I spend too much money on trinkets (some of which costing hundreds of thousands of dollars) to bring more positive attention to myself.

I'm trying to get over this. Paying attention to the attention only causes anxiety, reducing my abilities and making me look worse to other people. 'Tis a silly cycle but it's a roundabout with an a single entrance that closes behind you. I've spent numerous years fearing failure to the point where I've been paralyzed into doing nothing certain nights but reading (and not posting to) internet forums. I'm going to beat this.