I recognise a lot of the later parts of this. I'm an introvert too, though it isn't obvious to most people because I am a highly sociable introvert. I like people. I like people a lot. However, I do need time on my own to recharge when I've been in other people's company for too long, with certain exceptions (all of whom, incidentally, are also introverts). I've never seen this as any reflection on either myself or other people; it's just the way I operate. I suppose it's rather like swimming. No matter how much you like swimming, you can't spend all your time in the water and it wouldn't be safe to try. You have to get out and do other things.
As for the anxiety, I think the first thing to do is probably to set a small and achievable goal that you really want - like getting to a certain level in Japanese - and then thinking about where you want to go after you've achieved that one. The thing with anxiety (and I should know, because I still have it, although it's very well under control now and mostly relegated to the background) is that it tends to make huge goals look much more daunting than they really are. If I'd said to myself, "Right, now I am going to design and make a really awesome embroidered waistcoat," I'd probably have scared myself senseless. I had to break it up. First of all it was: "I am going to transfer the basic lines of the 19th-century paisley pattern to a grid on a computer where I can work with it." That's quite hard, but not too hard. Then it was: "I am going to get a waistcoat pattern and alter it to what I think are the right measurements, and then make a mock-up." Next: "I am going to work out the scale I need for the paisley-based design, put it on a large piece of graph paper, and trace it onto the waistcoat front pattern pieces." Next: "I am going to embroider this basic repeating design in place." I'm on that stage at the moment, and the final stage will be "I am now going to start freely ornamenting it," by which point it actually won't be hard, because I will have the background design there to use as a base.
One step at a time, and you can fool your anxiety into thinking it's not a problem. ;-)
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Date: 2011-09-02 08:59 am (UTC)As for the anxiety, I think the first thing to do is probably to set a small and achievable goal that you really want - like getting to a certain level in Japanese - and then thinking about where you want to go after you've achieved that one. The thing with anxiety (and I should know, because I still have it, although it's very well under control now and mostly relegated to the background) is that it tends to make huge goals look much more daunting than they really are. If I'd said to myself, "Right, now I am going to design and make a really awesome embroidered waistcoat," I'd probably have scared myself senseless. I had to break it up. First of all it was: "I am going to transfer the basic lines of the 19th-century paisley pattern to a grid on a computer where I can work with it." That's quite hard, but not too hard. Then it was: "I am going to get a waistcoat pattern and alter it to what I think are the right measurements, and then make a mock-up." Next: "I am going to work out the scale I need for the paisley-based design, put it on a large piece of graph paper, and trace it onto the waistcoat front pattern pieces." Next: "I am going to embroider this basic repeating design in place." I'm on that stage at the moment, and the final stage will be "I am now going to start freely ornamenting it," by which point it actually won't be hard, because I will have the background design there to use as a base.
One step at a time, and you can fool your anxiety into thinking it's not a problem. ;-)