When I got to college, it was my 12th school in 12 years. Moving so much made me pretty shy as a kid because the characteristics that would make me the coolest girl in the world in one place would be a huge problem at the next. So I never knew how people were going to react and often wished I just didn’t have to interact.
When I hit puberty, I forced myself to stop being shy because it became kinda necessary then, ya know.
Since being online a lot and living in Los Angeles, I have become more shy again. I think it is because the internet satisfies some of my desire for human contact without awkward pauses. I think it is because a horrible adult faux pas in Los Angeles can follow a person forever in a way that a kid’s social oops somewhere else does not.
I find that most of the time when I have a bout of shyness about meeting someone in person, it is because either (a) how the interaction goes is particularly important and particularly unpredictable or (b) it is an interaction that I should avoid. Given that it tends to be one or the other, it is hard to decide which ones to force myself to do.