By Crystal Lambert
Unless you have an outgoing, extroverted type personality, who the hell really feels like stepping out of their comfort zone? I’d rather just sip my coffee, and keep imagining all the things I wish I were cool enough to do, then proceed to tell myself that I’ll do it one of these days—just not today.
Does that sound like any of you? If not, I envy you. See, I believe that I am half introvert half extrovert. I’m pretty sure I was born a complete introvert, but thanks to my dad, he pushed me out of that— for the most part. I remember being around 4 years old, and my parents would take me to the mall playground to interact with other kids. I loved that little playground, I just didn’t like making new friends. I was way too shy. So there I am left in the middle of this exhilarating, yet terrifying plastic jungle. Back then it was like the Yucatan to me, full of logs, mushrooms, and other forestry things, all I wanted to do was walk, and perhaps sit down and swing my tiny legs on the frogs tongue— and for all of the other kids to leave me the hell alone. When I was done I would walk happily back to my parents. Then came the much dreaded, yet anticipated question from my father, “Did you have fun? How many friends did you make?.” Crap. “Yes, and umm… like… well… none.” Sure enough he’d send me right back to the playground to go introduce myself to someone and ask if they’d like to play.
As much as I hated introducing myself to make friends, I’m glad I was forced to do it. Throughout the years, I slowly but surely broke out of my shyness. With that said, you’d think I’d be able to go out and do anything I wanted to do with no problem.
It took me 3 years to start blogging. I knew I always enjoyed writing, I would write short stories at home and worked super hard on my essays for English. Then one day I decided to create a blog. This is going to be great! I wrote a few entries but told no one about them. I had way to many insecurities. What if my writing isn’t good enough? I can’t spell that well, and I think I have grammar issues. What if people think what I write about is stupid? Forget this, I’m done. After much consideration and compliments from a few professors, I decided to try again.
So hello everyone, here I am, stepping out of my comfort zone, putting my thoughts out there for whoever cares to read. Did I get rid of those insecurities? No, not really, but at the end of the day this is what makes me happy. This is how I am able to relieve stress. This is what I have been doing for years, just privately. Why not share it with the world? Yes, there will be people who dislike my posts, but there will also be people who find what I have to say uplifting. If I can make just one person’s day better by sharing my thoughts, then I have done what I intended to do.
Moral of the story— step out of that comfort zone and go for it! You’ll never know what you’re capable of doing until you try.
Dulcetlove 