Let’s just get one thing straight right now: I am a budding socialite. Yep. That’s me. I love attention and love to be out on the town with an entourage of people.

Done laughing? Good.

Truth is, I’m pretty damned anti-social. I wish I could pinpoint when this all started, but my life has largely consisted of long periods of hermitage (to relationship damaging degrees) punctuated by brief moments of lukewarm social activity. Okay…let’s not lie…reclusion is a better term. Being social is simply difficult for me. Exhausting even. I often need a couple days to recover from spending an evening with friends. I know this sounds awful, but it has nothing to do with how I feel about those people. Not always, anyway.

I love my friends. Promise. Hell, I even like some of them.

I really don’t want to be this way. It’s not too fun. I simply prefer to be home over anywhere else in the world. Keep me locked up in my office or living room and I’m happy as a clam. I like the world to stay outside. The tough part is that I have noticed it coming to a head.

Basic interaction has become riddled with anxiety. I noticed that just the other day, a simple phone call to a mechanic got my heart to pounding. I’m sure I can hear someone screaming at me to go see a therapist or something, but I probably wouldn’t be making this post if I had been able to do that. Or maybe I would. Maybe they would tell me to be more open and candid about my feelings. I guess it would be the smart thing to do, but I have a plan of my own for now. This blog is part of that plan.

I’m going to do just as I’ve said and be more open. I’ve made the conscious decision to strive to be more social. To do more things with more people. I know my wife will certainly appreciate it. She is much more social than I am and I have been a bit of dead weight for her in that regard. I used to like social media, then I didn’t. I suppose some of it was a bit of paranoia, but that’s really a post for another day. Now I have come at it with a new approach. A much more casual approach. And this time I want to share more. As I write, I hope to be brave enough to share more of it with people. People I know and even strangers. And so far…it’s working. (Just a bit. But a bit is something.)

I’ll say more later.

-Neon