Stepping out into the world

I haven't done this before so I'm a little overwhelmed but here we go. I told myself I would work on being more social this year and put myself in environments that I have always wanted to be in, but feared taking those steps towards such thing. It will honestly sound silly when I tell you what I pushed myself to do cause in retrospect, it really isn't hard at all but I guess that it kind of is when you have never done it before.

I've lived in a residential area of Toronto since I've moved here nearly four years ago. I have never changed apartments and my street only has two buildings including mine and the rest is all houses with a giant park with trails at the end of the street. It was the closest thing to home that I could get and while I hated it when I first moved there because I wanted the hustle and bustle of downtown Toronto, now, I appreciate it for everything it is reminiscent of. However, while I love where I live, it is largely isolated from the hustle and bustle and there's a total of one real café in walking distance from me, if I don't count the mall which isn't really the cute cozy café vibe I would ultimately be interested in.

I have been in dozens, if not hundreds of cafes in my lifetime. Almost always, I will see a person sitting down and either reading a book or working away on their laptop in whichever café I choose to go to. It's something that is normal.. to see people doing that and yet, it has never really been something I engaged in myself. In recent weeks, as I have been working on this whole "figure out how to be more social" thing, I realized that my Sundays are usually reset days and I typically will use Sundays for getting groceries, doing chores around the house, or simply to relax with a book in my hand. Sundays are also rather isolating because I will generally do all of the above on my own. I will sometimes spend hours on a Sunday just reading my book in the comfort of my own apartment, my own bed, with my own blankets.

While that may sound relaxing and quite frankly it is, Sundays alone also defeat my whole purpose of trying to get out there more. I have plenty time to be alone, that's not really the problem, but I really shouldn't take one of the only days a week that I have fully off, to be entirely alone. I can divide any of my chores up to do a few every day of the week and not leave anything to Sunday so I have no real reason to be home. I can relax for half of the day Sunday and do something for the other half. Why am I often so hung up in my own ways?

And so, this past Sunday, I decided to check out a café in an effort to escape my own self-sabotaging ways. I love being alone but I also love to be surrounded by people, interact, or simply have the ability to people watch and overhear conversations. I love the smell of coffee constantly being brewed, the sound of the milk frother. It's all so simplistic and yet so satisfying. I drove down to a café I found online that's in midtown but the perfect part of midtown where street parking is free. I parked my car and walked over and before I entered the café, I took a deep breath and in my mind somewhere, I said to myself "you got this".

I get so mad at myself sometimes because as soon as I sat down with my book, coffee and scone, I was immediately like "well that was easy" and I hate that I've gotten to a point where these things give me mild anxiety but in reality, this is so normal and easy and so many people do it and I just don't get why I let myself get so worked up about these things. I have eaten in dozens of restaurants by myself without giving it a second thought so why is this any different?

In trying to rationalize all of this, I will say that when you do something for the first time, it's probably normal to have a little bit of anticipation anxiety because that new thing I did was the unknown, even if it is a super mundane thing to do. Now having done it, I want to do it more often and I am even excited for the next time. While I was there, I kept thinking how cool it would've been to bring my laptop and write a blog entry about everything I was experiencing in the moment, in an authentic way. Now having done it, I know how to prepare better for next time. I know to bring my laptop, my journal and my book.

Doing something for the first time can be a scary experience even if in retrospect it is something that shouldn't be scary. The unknown can be unnerving and it's okay to get anxiety over it. Give yourself grace for taking that first step, no matter how silly it may be. If it helps you grow as a person, it was probably worth it.