Well, fuck. I guess I’m doing this. 

The amount of time I have spent fannying around with it, I could have posted it several times over. 

I’m going to shoot from the hip, this might be uncomfortable…

Are you awkward? If you are, chances are you are also an overthinker? 

Which means you are probably also anxious?...

 A procrastinator? OK, let’s see…

Does the thought of having to dance sober cause you to forget that you have arms that can move independently from the rest of your body?

Does having to make a telephone call make you sweat profusely, plan out the conversation and then be completely and entirely thrown off because you didn’t anticipate them deviating from your ‘script’?

Do you walk for some distance, realise you’ve gone the wrong way and keep going the wrong way because you are waiting for no one to be about to see you turn around? 

Does the thought of having to share a fun anecdote or an interesting fact about yourself to a group of strangers make you want to soil yourself just so that you can excuse yourself from the room? 

Does prolonged eye contact make you feel very aware that you have eye balls?

Yes to some or all of the above?

Hi! Welcome!

I’m Laura, I love dogs, art, reading, soul and folk music. I am a recently graduated creative writing student. I’m in my late thirties. Oh yeah and I’m awkward as fuck!

Full disclosure because I want to be me, not some polished, edited version of myself - We’ll leave the editing for the novel writing:

I. Have. No. Idea. What. I. Am. Fucking. Doing. 

That might be blog suicide admitting that but I’ve stuck to rules my entire life and I’m a bit bloody bored of it if I’m honest. I’m still ironing out what I want this blog to be but I can tell you what it is definitely not.

This blog is not: 

❌ Therapy. 

❌ A ‘cure’ for anxiety

❌ A guide to become ‘less’ weird. 

I am not: 

❌ A therapist. 

❌ A life coach/ expert. 

❌ A cult leader.

But this blog is:

✅ A space that provides honest stories, awkward as fuck moments and personal experiences that you can relate to that can help make you feel less alone. 

Hopefully, you’ll be able to accept your awkwardness rather than trying to obliterate it away and mold yourself to fit in a box (I’m 100% guilty of that).

The world is a vast place full of millions of different personalities and interesting people, what a terrible shame to try and dim your light. 

So, let's talk a little about raw awkwardness, not cutesy or adorable awkwardness:

Have any of you ever directly been told that you are awkward? I definitely have.

“God! You’re so awkward, aren’t you?!” 

Well duh, thanks for the personality diagnosis, Captain Obvious. 

What really fascinates me is how comfortable people are saying those things out loud. Maybe it’s because I overthink almost every word I say but, why say it at all? Is it just simply making an observation? Or is it that social norms have made people think that anything that deviates from what we consider “normal” is weird? There could be many different reasons but I know personally for me, that this hits my shame button, and hard! Which I suppose is a combination of those reasons for example, the fear of being seen as different and the pressure to conform.

There’s also scenarios that I have found myself in where, if I'm comfortable enough to express to someone that I am awkward, they don’t see it. Other people have said 

“You come across really confident” 

That fucking baffles the shit out of me because I’m thinking to myself… but how? Then * ping * lightbulb moment ohhhhh, you just haven’t seen it yet. 

My problem is, whenever they finally do see it, the shame alarm goes off again. 

So within both scenarios I find myself in a place where there is a pressure to perform. I want to get to a place where I don’t feel like I’m doing that and I’m sure that you probably would like that for yourself, if you relate. 

I’ve realised that I want to understand this better and in the past therapy has helped me with other things and I think it will help me again. So, I’m going to be venturing into exploring that whilst also sharing my awkwardness with you. 

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for taking the time out of your day. I’ll be posting (hopefully) every Friday. 

Be right back - overthinking everything I just wrote.