First of all, thank you all for taking the time to respond. 🙂

Sorry my first post was a little rambling. I just kind of burst and had to write Something. Things are not so bad. I have a lot of great friends that I see on a regular basis. In fact, just yesterday I had the pleasure of attending two of my friend’s wedding, which was a lot of fun. Just doing things with people I know is never a problem.

Anita, your quote about being stuck in a rut because change is difficult feels spot on. And what makes it so frustrating is that I know that just taking that first step will make things so much better, yet I still can’t seem to take that first step. When I’m in a position where I can’t do much of anything (such as at work) I spend time thinking about all the fun activities I could be doing, but when I get off work I just seem to … slide off of them, is the best I can put it. Rather than do anything interesting or exciting I just settle into comfortable and boring. In the past I would have said I was avoiding them due to the huge stress they cause, but these days I don’t even feel the stress as avoiding them has become practically automatic. AND I HATE IT.

I suppose the best way is to give a concrete example… I used to play this tabletop game called “Warmachine” (you don’t need to know any more than that, but you can look it up if you want). It was fun and interesting and challenging and I don’t think it would be unfair to say that I was very good at it. But somewhere in being really good and having fun I became scared to play because I might lose. So I sabotaged myself by playing in weird ways that were not as effective so as to be able to provide an excuse to myself if I lost. It didn’t work*. Over the past year or so I’ve felt more and more that this is the problem in microcosm. I get so stressed out over things not going well that I eventually just give up and do something else. Also I think this should have come before the previous paragraph. The urge to ramble is clearly too strong.

I found this site by googling various keywords to look for help and I will say that a lot of the articles here are really good. It’s just that nothing seems to really help. I might be able to trick myself into feeling better, but it never lasts for more than a couple days. All of the answers I see boil down to “just do it anyway and you’ll feel better”, which I know is true. But if I could “just do it” I wouldn’t be here asking for help. So, I don’t know.
Bleh.

*I won a bunch anyway and felt even more stressed out.