What helps me is knowing that everyone is fucking awkward.
I've met thousands upon thousands of people and I have never met anyone who is not socially awkward, just a lot of people who are socially skilled in different ways.
The people who don't come across as awkward are the people who acknowledge their awkwardness and own it, who give themselves an opportunity to fumble with their awkwardness and to get used to it the same way you do with any other difficult thing like math or reading or studying or dance or games.
I said all of that to say, not being awkward is not a talent, it is a skill, and you can learn it.
I don't think I'm ever going to forget, I went on a road trip and when I was in Arizona stopped at a rest stop and took a leak and washed my hands afterwards.
This native guy walked in, and I only call him out for being native because I'm native also so it's kind of cool to see another one in the wild, and he immediately said, "Get some poop on your hands? I only wash my hands when I get poop on them."
So yeah, I never touch anything in a bathroom without like at least a paper towel between me if I can avoid it
You can buy a cheap smartwatch that will monitor your pulse, give you a pulse oximeter reading, handle text messages and phone calls, take photos, and also within a reasonable margin of error check your blood sugar for about $35 on AliExpress.
Even better, if you scour your local thrift stores you can occasionally find them for as little as $10 and all they typically need is a cleanup and a new toner cartridge.
I bought mine for $7 4 years ago and it's still working on the toner cartridge that was in the printer when I bought it.
Admittedly, I only print about 40 or 50 pages a year but that's a hell of a deal.
Books-A-Million and Barnes & nobles have one advantage, people that really like books like picking up the books and looking at them. It also helps that you can usually get coffee and read your acquisitions and there are board games and all sorts of things that they sell to kind of balance out the mix.
There are a couple of stores that I have seen that used to be brick and mortar or catalog based and made the transition to online but their website is terrible.
McMaster-Carr comes to mind. I'm never really sure if I have found the part I'm looking for whenever I shop on their website.
Maybe it's a skill issue, sure, but online shopping should not require an onboarding process.
When I get isekaied I'm going to genetically alter regular house flies and turn them into flies that can seek out any flung projectile and abscond with it for consumption.
I'll give them the power to travel from wherever and whenever they are to intersect with any weapon thrown against me.
They'll eat sling stones and will make short work of trebuchet rocks but my time flies really like an arrow.
The Tibetan mystics know they will be reincarnated against the law of the CCP so even though they've come up with dozens of functional magical spells they are lying about them and not sharing them with the pla.
I feel like being spied on on the Internet is kind of like having a camera in your bathroom.
Sure they promise they're only going to point it at the sink and just make sure that you're engaging in proper toothbrushing habits.
Sure.
But they'll set it at the point where the mirror shows the shower and the toilet and they've got smell detectors in there to determine how much food you've eaten and how well your digesting it and there's a sensor in the toilet to check the content of your urine and then if you drink too much they're going to tell your boss that you've been drinking because they detected the alcohol that your body flushed out in your urine when you peed.
And you have no control over who gets to see what's going on in your bathroom.
It is morally wrong and psychologically oppressing to be spied upon.
And the powers that be are so focused on the benefits it gives them that they do not care about the negatives that affect us.
Automatically killing all pedophiles tells pedophiles to murder their victims as the punishment for murder can be less than the penalty for pedophilia.
Would you rather a child be sexually assaulted and survive or for a child to be sexually assaulted and then murdered?
That's the decision you're making when you vote for summary execution of pedophiles.
What helps me is knowing that everyone is fucking awkward.
I've met thousands upon thousands of people and I have never met anyone who is not socially awkward, just a lot of people who are socially skilled in different ways.
The people who don't come across as awkward are the people who acknowledge their awkwardness and own it, who give themselves an opportunity to fumble with their awkwardness and to get used to it the same way you do with any other difficult thing like math or reading or studying or dance or games.
I said all of that to say, not being awkward is not a talent, it is a skill, and you can learn it.