People?

Being The author of Shell Shock Serenade has been an incredibly rewarding experience. I've mentioned the many benefits relating to the actual writing of posts. It's cathartic, it frees me from the bondage of the past, not too unlike confession. It gives me a forum and promotes the discipline to vent my emotions in a positive way. All of those things and more combined I find quite liberating.

I'm starting to recognize now the social, interactive aspect of blogging. My posts are just now starting to provoke a few comments, which are very flattering and extremely helpful. I'm getting an equal amount of private correspondence as well. This communication was something I was not really expecting and I was surprised yet overjoyed when I kept getting feedback on my posts...The readership is quite small but the effect of even this limited interaction has been rather profound..

A recurring theme in some of my "recovery oriented" posts is isolation. Yes, I withdrew from society almost totally by the end of my active addiction. Not a healthy decision on my part as it just reinforced my feelings of alienation leading to more and more self-hatred. I was becoming dangerous to myself as suicide became an obsession and a true attempt a reality.

As we all now know, that attempt failed, leading to a major change, then an incredible transformation...one that continues until this very day. Yet I can still struggle sometimes with the tendency to isolate. It part of my personality...

I am an introvert, always was. I tend to be perfectly happy finding my daily life's stimulation from within. But I happen to believe to have the balance in my life that I require to feel good and emotionally healthy, I need to develop better relationships with people. And I am talking about all levels of interaction from family, friends to just social acquaintances. I feel a great deal of positive energy comes from those various types of human contact.

As I was writing this post, I looked up Introversion on Wikipedia and the definition was startling. It described me almost to a T, including a very specific comment about a Introverts willingness to open up in a "Blogging" environment:Wikipedia definition of Introversion/Extroversion here.

That is where Shell Shock has surprisingly contributed, much to my surprise and delight. Written interaction with the readers of Shell Shock has been a very healthy experience for me. I didn't expect it really and I was rather naive about how much it might  actually affect me. But never the less it has turned out to be a big thumbs up as far as I am concerned.

I love it when you don't even have a plan and things STILL come together!