I showed yesterday's post to a friend...and she gave me a lecture.

Yesterday, after I posted, I decided to print out a copy of my post to keep with me. Then last night, on the way to work, I showed my post to a friend of mine.

It didn't take long for her to start in on me. She gave me this long lecture about it. She feels that my post about envy and learning to be happy for someone else's good fortune was a way of shutting myself down and selling myself short. "You haven't even talked to the man," she said, "and you're already thinking ten steps ahead!" She insisted that I was backing myself into a corner, and that I needed to stop being afraid and take a chance. I talked to others about it before and after work, and they all say the same thing.

I know this. I understand that I'll never know unless I take a chance. But it's much easier said than done. Speaking from my experience, I believe it would hard for me to just approach someone--to just walk up and say "Hey, how are you doin?"--without being looked at as if I'm crazy. In my specific case, the guy already knows me, and he knows how quiet and seclusive I usually am, and if I decide one day to just all of a sudden approach him and say "hi," he might first wonder why the sudden change and then wonder why I chose to approach him specifically.

I figure that at that point, he'd probably catch on that I have a crush on him, and depending on how he'd take it, he'd either let me down easy, cuss me out, or just avoid me like the plague. He may even go so far as to file harrassment charges against me. (A male acquaintance of mine told me that men don't file harassment charges, but I'm pretty sure that at least one guy has before.)

I know, I know--I shouldn't be so negative, and he probably wouldn't do all that. But I think it would still put him in an awkward position if I was to decide to just walk up to him and say "hi" to him out of the clear blue, especially if I've never directly communicated with him before.

Maybe I'm wrong about this; maybe he wouldn't feel awkward about it. Maybe I should just go ahead and take that leap and stop stressing about it. The worst he can do is say, "Don't talk to me, I don't like you, go away, I already have a girlfriend." The worst he could do is avoid me. But I'll never know unless I try.