Hyperbolic freak out mode

So it’s been two months. Two months of blogging.

If you’ve read this blog for very long at all, you might’ve heard me mention that I’m shy. Really, really shy. If I had my druthers, I could probably give any recluse a run for their money, and my husband often says I’m an introvert masquerading as an extrovert.

So that’s me. And yet I’m blogging. I’m social networking. I’m talking to folks from around the world.

It hasn’t been easy, though. I go into panic-stress-freak-out mode after every blog post, tweet, etc. Hyperbolic freak out. If I could hide under my bed, erase my identity or change my name after most anything I say online, half the time, you best believe I would.

And that hasn’t really gotten much better.

But, you say, it’s only been two months.

True. But does it feel like ten years? Heck yes. Oh heckedy heck yes.

So sometimes I wonder what’s the point? Is this helping me or my writing career? Is it worth the stress, this pushing myself so far beyond my comfort zone, I couldn’t find my way back with a treasure map and fifty bloodhounds?

And sometimes I’m not sure. But here’s the funny thing. Not too long after I started this crazy undertaking (a.k.a. blogging and social networking), I noticed that I wasn’t freaking out after talking to people in person anymore. Not freaking out after talking to total strangers. I was even starting interactions with strangers and not even remembering those conversations or running them through my head later because they just hadn’t phased me that much.

And that’s new. That’s different. That’s a change I noticed after blogging that could only have come from God and this because it’s never, ever happened before.

Which is really, really cool.

So thank you, commenters, lurkers, Twitter followers, and new Internet friends. I’m still freaking out after talking to you and can’t promise (or even hope to believe) I won’t have a panic attack after this blog post is done, but I can say this is helping. You’re helping. You and blogging are changing my life for the better.

And despite all the stress, and the hyperbolic freak outs, that is absolutely worth something.

 

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