The astute will notice a large gap between this entry and the next one.

Califur was not a success for me; it was not "a blast." All sorts of social anxiety issues kept me pretty much locked down. I tried six times to talk to someone I already know, but veered away at the last second each time.

<snip>

I had a lot more written here. Essentially a blow-by-blow of all the crap that happened. But no one wants to read that and I think it came across badly. Instead, I'll just say that crap happened that was bad enough that I no longer thought I was just an introvert or shy. This event showed me there was an actual problem.

So even though it was a painful, expensive lesson to learn, I was able to seek out professional advice and ended up with a diagnosis of what's going on. That's allowed me to get some training, some clarity on what's going on, and some medication to deal with this shit for good.

It's a slow process, but I now believe that the "old me" is still there and I can get back to that.

PS - RainFurrest really was a blast!