Shrinking Violets: The Secret Life of Shyness

After changing the water in my aquarium Thursday morning, I picked up Cathy in my little red convertible on the nicest day of the year so far. We went to Vandusen Garden to mosey around before having lunch there. It felt so good to not only be outdoors, but in a quiet garden.

It’s therapeutic to be in nature. I know that but every time I feel it, it feels as good as when I first learned it. It’s so sensual. There’s fragrance, visual beauty, the sound of water and birdsong; there’s also majesty in the trees, exquisite detail in the flora and patterns and there’s quiet calm.

And it was fun to drive on a sunny day. The top was up though.

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Dwight brought me some Ethafoam. It’s interesting material and could work for dress #10. It would be interesting to work with but it’s expensive (perhaps $150) and it may require a special glue gun ($128) and special glue ($50). I have to do my taxes so I’m going to have to face how much I have spent on this project.

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We’ve reached that time of year when the setting sun beams brightly into my office at the end of the day and I have to lower the blinds to work. Yesterday afternoon, being so sunny, made my early evening a delight to experience at my desk.

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I consider myself to be a shy person so Shrinking Violets: The Secret Life of Shyness by cultural historian Joe Moran is a book that interests me. Here are some great quotes from a review I read:

• But shyness can also be, Moran argues, a great gift, its impulse toward introversion allowing for the inventive thinking and creative genius that might elude the more talkatively inclined.
  
• Shyness, so emotionally adjacent to shame, is often also regarded as a cause for it. Within a culture that so deeply values self-confidence—and that takes for granted that social skills are external evidence of one’s internal self-regard—shyness is seen with suspicion.
  
• That is the paradox that animates Shrinking Violets: Shyness is an extremely normal condition that has yet, despite it all, to be normalized…. The world, for all the strides it has made when it comes to progress and acceptance, still does not look kindly on timidity.