UPDATE:
When I started this blog, I debated on the angle I would take. I am a big fan of humour, and I decided I would try and tackle the whole "humour writer" thing. And to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure how successful that has been. I've been writing pretty much my whole life: journals, fiction, stream-of-consciousness kind of pseudo-poetry, and the occasional creative essay have been a regular hobby of mine since I was five years old. But one thing I have never really tackled until lately is humour writing. I love to laugh, and I love to read humour, but I have always kind of doubted my own hilariousness.
So it's been a good run, I guess, with my silly little tales of social anxiety and self-deprecation. But I'm not really sure if I've been as funny as I had hoped. I think some posts have nailed it more than others, and I'm certainly not abandoning humour entirely - in fact, I don't even know yet how serious the new direction of my writing is going to be. It could turn out to be a 50/50 kind of thing. I could still lean heavily on the side of hilarity. I really don't know. And there are certainly going to be some "serious" posts cropping up that have a certain wit or sarcasm to them, that might get a chuckle or two out of you all. I guess what I'm trying to say is: We'll see where this whole blogging journey takes us.
---
Well hey there, friends! Thanks for stopping by my little cocoon to learn a little bit about me, the Social Caterpillar, and what I'll be doing here on this blog.
Who am I? Well, for starters, I'm not really a caterpillar - but that's too bad, because a blogging caterpillar would be awesome. In real life, I'm a twentysomething white lady living in the suburbs of a biggish Canadian city, with my fiancé and our two cats in a modest garden home. I work in communications for the head office of a national NGO, and as you've probably already guessed, I'm a writer. I'm polictically liberal, firmly secular, and mostly heterosexual; but that's not what this blog is about.
You see dear reader, I am, quite frequently, painfully insecure.
This is something that will probably surprise some of my friends and acquaintances more than others. We all like to put up a front, right? We all like to broadcast an image of ourselves that is a little bit more confident than most people; a little bit more self-aware; a little bit more everything. Anything more than that, and we worry we could be arrogant; anything less, and we're just another shameful, insecure, unsure pawn adrift in a sea of sheep. But of course, we really are those pawns - and I am one of them.
I'm sure I have some friends and acquaintances who would say I have a self-confidence that is stunningly sharp. And that's because depending on my relationship with those people, I might feel the need to project that image - the one of a woman who's ok with her looks, her smarts, her attitude, herself. But I think that most people who know me really well could tell you that although I rarely talk about it, because I am terrified of being THAT person, I'm really quite hard on myself.
I'm constantly doubting my ability to navigate the simplest social situations, like making a special request of a meal at a restaurant, or engaging in small talk with an associate or stranger at a party. Furthermore, my fiancé - who I'll call Mr. Caterpillar - can attest to my freakishly debilitating guilty conscience. I've lost sleep (sometimes entire nights) due to stressing that I may have unintentionally implied some sort of insult against a friend. I've spent hours running through meaningless, unimportant conversations with strangers at parties, worrying I came across as judgmental after they've told me some terrible thing they've done that any sane person would be justified in judging. I would rather starve than send food back. I am, most of the time, stumbling through the world with panic over every freaking thing I say, do, look at, or think.
And it's time I got over my damn self a little bit, don't you think?
With The Social Caterpillar, I hope to be yet another voice among many on the internet saying occasionally funny, sometimes insightful, usually smart and always entertaining things about my life and life in general. I hope you're going to like my blog, and maybe even I'll get a laugh or nod or virtual thumbs-up out of some of my stories.
My little corner of the internet is just a place for me to chill out and meditate on my day, my month, my year, my life - a place for me to work through my social anxieties and hopefully eventually grow into that beautiful, wondrous thing I've always wanted to be: a fully-formed social butterfly. But for now, just sit back and relax and join me in laughing at myself. Cause if we can't do that, then really, what can we do?
(A note about the site: My friends and family have not consented to my publishing our various hijinx and misadventures. So any names you see here are fake, unless otherwise noted.)
