Project Fear Less: Flirt Back, i.e. The Origami Whale Story

So as you might have noticed if you keep up with this blog, I'm fairly recently single. I'm not about to get into the shitstorm that is discussing exactly why that happened, but it suffices to say for now that I've got a lot of reconfiguration to do in the manner that I interact with people. Specifically, I need to retrain myself to know that it's ok to engage people (especially attractive people) in conversation without a specific work- or school-based reason to do so. And it's ok to smile at people who smile at me, and laugh at their jokes and make jokes of my own. And, basically, it's ok to FLIRT.

Flirting always used to scare the crap out of me. Before I was in the two serious relationships that took up the past 5-and-a-bit years of my life (whiskey tango foxtrot), I'd always resort to the tomboy-joking-with-the-guys style of flirting. Which is to say, I swaggered and made dirty jokes and displayed my apparently uncommon interest in watching other people play video games (I honestly like it, I swear!) to the max. And also sometimes wore tight shirts. Sorry, Mama. But yeah. I never seemed to get the hang of the giggling and the cuteness and the outright flirtation that other girls had all perfected in high school, when I was busy making A-pluses on everything and running around in the woods lighting fires and not having any friends. But I digress.