Outreach program

Innumerable self esteem problems far too boring to write about and too rubbish to even indulge have always made me rather cautious about getting in touch with people. I always figure that seeing my name pop up in your email or text message inbox is exactly the kind of thing which would make you turn to Cthulhu or throw your gadgets in the sea before settling on a more bucolic life on a Hebridean island.

Recently I've been trying to go against all manner of things my brain tells me as a scientific experiment. And by god, it's making me feel so much more of a better person. I'm not sat worrying about my friends and family, hoping they'd drop me a line but understanding if they didn't. I'm putting myself out there more and reaping little rewards every time. One of them being that no-one has yet run to the hills to live in a Yurt and eat biltong and weeds.

Being more positive has its downsides, of course. It made me realise that I couldn't keep up my self-imposed exile from Facebook as well as continuing down this new path. But the evil that is The 'Book was almost immediately - within minutes, in fact - negated by catching up with some people I'd not spoken with for far too long. It's all good.

Could it be that every single one of my preconceived notions about myself were wrong? The scientific answer, sadly, appears to be yes. 2011 continues to be an annus mirabilis for me, if not for you dear reader, sat here trawling through all this nonsense. But I am finally learning some of the things that I perhaps should have picked up by the first year of primary school and I'm as excited as someone who's just learned to read.

My apologies to your heaving, overworked RSS readers.