It’s been a while since I posted here. I was let go from my previous job so spent some of the previous months learning how to code and want to launch an online business rather than put up with a normal job and its social interactions. The last job was literally a joke (I had been hired for a consulting position where there really was no need for my skills in the first place, so lose-lose). It’s almost as if fate has a hand in steering me away from normal jobs.

Last weekend I went with some acquaintances to a shooting range to fire some militay weapons. It’s been 15 years since I last fired any gun but all through my childhood my dad, an avid gun collector, took me shooting many weekends.

My skills were about as expected - bad on pistol, ok on (assault) rifle. Others saw how poorly I did with the pistol and I felt a deep shame and disappointment. Normally in my younger days the shame would have cut deeper and been harder to cope with. I would have seen myself as, I don’t know, a kind of sub-human who doesn’t deserve anyone’s positive attention. But today the disappointment just lingered there while I felt better able to cope with it, putting on a brave face despite the painful feelings.

But all this underscores my main problem in life: I was never able to cope with the normal host of disappointments and pain that comes with social interactions. For instance, everyone is free to like or dislike each other (though we try to stay polite) but I’ve always feared being disliked. This has caused me to limit my social interactions to the extent one finds me today: an introvert who still has shyness problems, too distrustful of others to “open up” to the extent necessary to have a normal and healthy social lifestyle. My wife constantly complains this has affected her life, so you see what people like me have to face when getting married or trying to have a normal life.

As a middle aged person, I find myself thinking of all the things I would have liked to have tried when younger: combat sports, scuba diving, etc., and realize the pursuit of these things would have required me to join a club and regularly expose myself and my flaws. Now after a lifetime of “exposing myself” I am still vulnerable, which tells me a certain amount of my problem cannot be unlearned or innoculated against, and is a permanent condition. I have to live with painful feelings from social interactions despite how many times I do it.

I feel age has tempered these feelings somewhat and made me more resilient, but they haven’t gone away. Last weekend at the range I had moments of intense embarassment and shame, and felt no one wanted contact with me (feelings of being an outcast), although the behavior of others should have had no impact whatsoever on me or my life.

It’s been a steep price to pay for my having my problem, and moreover there’s little I can do, in terms of gaining experience, to solve it. The only mitigation is developing coping strategies that can allow me to engage in such activities to a minimum extent.