Maybe watching the entire series of 'My So-Called Life' wasn't a great way to enhance my communication skills.

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This may be a little difficult to believe, but there was a time in my life when I was actually cool. I attended college (sparingly) at a medium-sized public university in Ohio, and I ended up becoming really popular there. I had dozens of friends. People I didn't even know knew my name and talked about me when I wasn't around, and they all loved hanging out with me. Boys wanted to date me, girls wanted to date me too. I had my pick of people to hang out with (in retrospect, I didn't usually make the right choice), everyone came to my parties, and if someone didn't like me it was because she was jealous.

Isn't that incredibly weird?

It's so wierd, especially considering that I can't even pick up the telephone and talk to someone I barely know when my entire career hinges on such things. Maybe I'm crazy, but I positively can't stand calling people. I freak out, I get all nervous, I forget what I wanted to say, and most of all I feel like a total pest. I don't like talking on the phone to begin with, and adding all that pressure I put on myself when it comes to my career, it becomes an anxiety issue. Like, as in anxiety attack....

Yesterday I actually picked up the phone, dialed, and then hung up when the person said hello. I hung up. On someone's cell phone. With caller ID. Luckily, my phone number has changed since I last talked to this person, so he doesn't know that it was me yet. But if I call back, I bet he'll figure it out...I'm such a moron!

I'm starting to freak out; to worry that my inability to cope with matters of the telephone are going to completely sabotage my chances at having any kind of production career at all. I'm beginning to fear that I have spent the last ten years of my life in languid pursuit of a job that I will never be able to do. I'm quite distraught over this--to the point that I've begun to think about what else I could possibly do for a career. What else am I possibly qualified for--that also wouldn't completely suffocate me the way my current corpo-temp-thing is suffocating me?

So riddle me this: how the hell was I ever popular and cool!? And having once been popular and cool, how did I end up like this? I'm stuck all alone in this giant city, with two halfheartedly interested family members and one friend who doesn't want to deal with any shows of emotion, and I'm a big blubbering mess of emotion! My life right now is one gigantic anxiety attack.

I need an outlet to release some of my emotional steam. Bellydancing lessons once a week doesn't cut it...I need to throw myself into something full scale! I need an extreme! I need...something! I just haven't figured out what it is yet!

Hopefully when I do I'll become sane enough to make a phone call without hanging up.