Thinking about friendships

I was laying in bed last night thinking about Cen's post on invisible friendships. Go read it if you haven't already and then come back. I'll wait.

Done? Ok.

I was thinking that most of my friendships in SL are invisible ones. There are VERY few people that I see on a regular basis. I see Cen, of course, but there are many people that I consider friends that I only see at the Wednesday parties, or maybe possibly if I bump into them when I'm out shopping. There are people on my friends list that I only IM and have met maybe once or twice in world. There are people in my group that aren't even on my friends list.

And that got me thinking. Why am I such a hermit? LOL It's not like in the real world where I think the way I look keeps me from fitting in with people. I know that as far as SL avatars go, I'm nice looking. It's not my clothes, because although many of them are freebies, I can keep up with the Armidi crowd as well as anyone else. It's not even that I think I'm dumb, because I know I can keep up with any conversation really. It all boils down to one thing.

I am, just like in my real life, really stupidly shy.

I know what people are probably thinking. How can you be shy? You help newbies. You DJ and people can hear your voice. You're a blogger, for pete's sake!! I know, I know, I know.

I am a big mass of insecurity, which would probably surprise most people. I always think my problems are less important than others. I always think that other people are much busier than I am. I always think that I'm going to bother someone. Even when my friends do IM me, there's always that tiny thought that makes me wonder if it's because they wanted to IM me to chat, or if they felt sorry for me.

This is NOT a plea for people to IM me and tell me how awesome I am, or leave me comments about how I rock. lol Nothing like that. I know it's up to me to leave the island and see people. It's up to me to stop being so shy and IM people with a hello. What I don't understand is why I can talk my head off in my blog, or hold people hostage and talk while I'm on the air, or even hop into a few plurks and banana dance, but I can't IM one of my girl friends to say "Hey, wanna come to a sale with me?"

Anyway...those are the thoughts running through my head today. I have a few hours to myself this afternoon, so I'm going to clean my RL house. Cleaning my SL home is always so easy. This RL cleaning stuff is not fun.