be more outgoing and stop hiding away from the world

...that my friend was organising. It was an African night – the food was all West African themed and there was great music from this guy from the Cote D’Ivoire. The discussions were mostly about Amnesty’s work in the Congo.

OK so I’m pretty pleased I actually got myself dressed up (I had to go and buy new clothes today, right down to new shoes!) and my friend even got me up in front of everyone to help with the raffle, and also got me to talk to the drummer from the Cote D’Ivoire cos I want to go there. So it’s been an evening of really meeting some amazing new people and having a pretty cool time.

As I write, the rest of the people from my course have all gone out to dinner. When I made excuses not to go (as I’ve done plenty of times before) many people said that I should come and they really seemed to mean it. Well, I’d like to think so. But I always make excuses and don’t go. It’s really hard for me to understand why I do this – I’m nervous of people and there’s a side of me that just keeps saying “noone really wants you there”. This is something I want to change – I know that there’s no real reason why people don’t want to know me. Well, I hope so.

So this is why this is one of my goals. xxx

I really hope I’m on the way to becoming less shy. I’ve always been kind of a quiet person, and sort of solitary. I think I’ll always value my alone-time but I’ve really been trying to put myself out there recently, and I’ve been feeling less anxious as well. I just wonder sometimes what exactly it is that I’m anxious of.

“Shyness has a strange element of narcissm,a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people.”
– Andre Dubus