Do The Talking: My biggest hardship as a #bookstagrammer (or let’s talk about social anxiety)

Hi!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a discussion. Despite having more than enough ideas for Do The Talking segment, I couldn’t get into the respective mood for each idea I wrote down into my book blogging bullet journal. But as I noticed my drastic decrease of social activity, I decided to share with you some thoughts on my biggest struggle as a #bookstagrammer, as well as a book blogger, which is social anxiety.

Let’s start with a confession of mine?

I’m a socially anxious person.

How does it appear?

• I’m originally very quiet. No matter how bright and cheerful I might appear to everyone who meets me, I’m, in fact, an introverted kind of person.
• It doesn’t actually mean that I completely isolate myself from the society or communication, so I’m definitely not a hikikomori. I do communicate when it’s inevitable and necessary.
• But on the other hand, when I’m talking to people I’m not close with (a.k.a. those who I don’t call best friends), I quickly feel the exhaustion, followed by the need of alone time. This situation excludes my meetings at work as a professional translator, where I can only have physical exhaustion (like having my chin tired from too much verbal translation, or basic exhaustion from overworking, etc.). Here I specifically talk about mental exhaustion.

How does my social anxiety affect my #bookstagrammer image?

• Although I really try to post regularly, and put efforts in writing decent captions, I’m really bad at communication. You see that I barely comment on other people’s posts, despite being not bad with giving away likes.
• Having over 300 bookstagrams to follow with no chronological feed algorithm to keep up with makes me feel mentally exhausted. It’s almost impossible for me to know updates on every single one. INSTAGRAM GIVE US BACK THE CHRONOLOGICAL FEED GODDAMNIT.
• I seriously don’t know what to comment. I’m known among my close friends as a person with a loosen tongue, and so I’m afraid of offending and hurting someone by my words. I never spread hate, be it on purpose or accidentally, but I try not to comment/talk much in order to avoid having some rude words slipping out of my mouth.
• I don’t like to annoy people around me. Every time I comment on someone’s post (especially if my comment is full of overreacting excitement), I have a feeling that I’m annoying the author of the post. Like I said, I’m a very quiet person, and prefer to observe from the distance rather than getting too close.
• The annoyance concern also relates to me participating in giveaways, shoutout sessions and so on. Good thing that Instagram now has stories options, where I can do shoutout sessions without a thought of possibly annoying people, since the stories disappear automatically, and followers can just easily skip them all. I feel like I’m not dedicating myself enough to my bookstagram when I only have reposts instead of my actual posts.
• I’d really like to have some recognition and attention, but at the same time I don’t want to be known as an attention seeker/whore/choose whatever definition you feel like suiting. Yes, I do over think a lot, and that’s the main part of my social anxiety. This might sound rude right now, but I overall don’t like putting too many efforts if I don’t know for sure that the result will be of a respective scale. And I don’t like when my efforts are wasted. Call me narcissistic whatsoever, but that’s how I am.

Any other reasons for my lack of social interaction?

Yes.
It’s somewhat related to my struggles as an international blogger, to whom English language is not the first one, mainly I mean the small amount of books I’ve read, and me not knowing lots of titles mentioned and featured on other bookstagrams. Do you really expect me to comment under every single photo “I haven’t read the book yet, and I consider putting it on my TBR list/read it next/not even consider reading it” (choose suitable option)? You sure I’ll be happy (and you, too) just commenting “Nice photo!” when you opened a discussion that I can’t relate to?

Is it actually possible for me to change that?

To be honest – I doubt so. The nature of my social anxiety goes deep into my childhood, so it’s almost impossible to alter it. I don’t know how long I can keep up as a book blogger and bookstagrammer, but like I mentioned – I hate when my efforts are wasted.

The other reason for its impossibility might sound shocking. But it’s that…
I don’t really mind my social anxiety condition. I’ve learned to live with it, and even feel much more relieved now that I know I have social anxiety. It helps me with keeping distance with most people, and also sorting out the communication priorities. Of course, sometimes it becomes an obstacle, but personally for me it’s more of an advantage. My social anxiety reminds me that I don’t need to appeal myself as someone I’m certainly not, and that it’s other people’s concern on whether to accept me as I am or not.

Sure it was hard for me to express my own concerns like this, but I hope you will appreciate my efforts in sharing this kind of stuff with you.
Is there anyone who also struggles hard like me? How do you deal with it? What most concerns you?

Thank you for hearing me out anyways,

Make sure to find me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads.