Gustavo Lacerda

Some friends who know me rather well think that I don't care about such things and have no problem approaching people. Well, in fact, I do have a moderate level of anxiety when approaching strangers, especially when I have no excuse, such as selling stuff, conducting a survey, etc.

That is probably because I don't censor my words very much. So they generalize to "Gustavo doesn't care what people think". In fact, some people think that's something cool about me. But it's not true. The truth is that, just like everybody else, I want to have / develop positive relationships with friends and lovers (to paraphrase Pinker(?)), so I do care about my reputation. Even if "not caring" is part of that reputation. But that would be a mask, not my true self.

So yesterday, at an outdoor concert, I decided that I would approach whoever I wanted to, so I did. This consisted mostly of attractive females, and it was easier than I imagined. I guess it's been a while since I approached someone without an excuse, like ummmm... a week. umm.. ok, not that long.

Now I'm going to get experienced at approaching people without a second thought. If people already think I'm way that, I might as well live up to my reputation.

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