An Overview

I suppose I'm guilty of not telling my own life story properly. That is to say, you kind of need to know what's going on with me in general, to see what motivates me. Otherwise stories about my daily life have no context at all. So let's fix that!

A while back I was happily in a relationship with a girl named Alexandra--in love, even. We spent 10 months together, and in that time she was my focus. I was her boyfriend first and a writer second. There was more than a bit of talk about someday getting married.

When that ended, I was devastated. Partly because I didn't know how to live without her anymore. Partly because when she left me, she said it was because I had become a depressing person, and because I was still so shy and awkward all the time that her family saw me as a weak man. She told me that she'd felt that way for four months already--four months! She said she was only waiting to see if I'd get better, and I didn't.

So there I had it. I wasn't enough. The next girl that I had a short fling with told me the same things, and that led to a big fight that ended things before they began. I started dating even when it didn't make sense--flirting with close coworkers, dating girls too young for me, considering girls that I honestly had no interest in. I needed them to tell me that I was worth something, and that I was more than just some nice guy.

It turns out that approval was not what I needed. It wouldn't have helped me one bit in the long run. Luckily, I found inspiration instead. It came from a guy that was like me once, and in fact had it even worse at times. Without going into too much detail (for his sake), he taught me what it is that really attracts girls, and at the same time what it was that I needed.

Confidence. Plain and simple. He showed me how to walk the walk, how to meet other people's eyes and hold contact, and to never, ever look at the ground. And that was just one part of what he told me about. That was a little over a month ago, I think, and in the last couple of weeks I've seen myself improve a lot. If nothing else, people at work keep telling me lately that I seem really happy and that I'm doing a great job there. I joke around quite a bit more and people smile at me.

Still, there's a long way to go. I still won't just walk up to someone and talk to them, and even around people I know, I don't dare to interrupt conversations even when what I have to say is probably more important. At this point that's a pretty big barrier to the overall goal of becoming a more social and truly confident person (which may involve meeting girls or not--I'm past being too concerned about that!)

But that's where I'm heading. I want to better myself, to take responsibility for all of my actions and become someone to truly admire. That's my new path and nothing's going to stop me from doing that!