I think that people put on ..demeanors or personalities/moods for given social situations. A large part of the decision of what to put on, what to 'wear', is based on tradition. Simply mimicing what they saw those before them do. Eventually it becomes 'natural'.

If instead you're reiventing everything, questioning everything, you may reject certain demeanors or simply hold back from putting them on simply because you haven't yet decided that they're really the best thing to do.

Then you're left with what? Unsureness. Appearing nervous. Ill at ease. Or just appearing flat. You don't know how you should act. So you hold back and appear shy. Or unemotional. Or unfriendly.

This ties into being a 'late bloomer', instead of just copying others and getting as far as you'll ever get by the age of 20, you think things through, invent your own way, or eventually decide the tradition was actually the best way, and thus you don't 'mature' till much later. And though perhaps with insufficient exposure to certain situations you just never do 'mature'.

In my life I've done both by the way. I've followed tradition very closely at times. And when I did it seems a lot of people were impressed. Some few women wanted me, my mom was very happy with me... but I was kind of disgusted. Because I knew it was an act. An act I was capable of falling into. And making 'natural' but still part of a tradition that I hadn't actually decided was truly the right way forward. So, thus, I was just really mindlessly going along like a puppet, in my mind. And a part of me was disgusted with myself. Even though I wasn't seemingly causing any harm and in fact apparently making a lot of people happy/impressing people, etc.

I'm talking of stuff from just how you greet a new person and carry on a conversation up to how you act at a wedding. How you dance, how you take part in the festivities there and at a dance and anywhere.

Instead of being disgusted with myself I then mostly preferred to appear as if I were sulking. Which is to say holding back, appearing glum/'flat'. Just observing. Not taking part in anything that I hadn't decided was truly the best way forward.

And then, when I'm not taking part in the games that others have decided to play, they get annoyed. Of course people generally are mindlessly playing along/following tradition and of course those who are turning left when everyone else turns right, or just aren't walking at all are going to piss some people off.

But here, just noting part of what nervousness can be in social situations. Along with focusing too much on yourself instead of having interest in others. Of course too much interest in the other ruins the balance and you've 'won' and then they're probably going to be nervous and so on.

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I borrowed an electric guitar from my one brother-in-law and yesterday a friend from nepal came over to play it. He has a couple such guitars in Nepal but didn't bring them with him. It's just like a somewhat cheap child's electric guitar. But with lots of overdrive distortion and/or some flanger, it sounds OK.

Attempting to play music with this guy a few times now hasn't really worked. He mainly just played bits of other people's songs. Which he does well, and was nice to listen to. There's something about having it right in front of you, controlling the distortion, etc yourself which is nice. But in trying to just play a few chords along with a drumbeat he starts he and there falling out of time.

So for me the interesting thing is to write music. I've zero interest in just playing other people's music. I want to improv and/or at least write original stuff. That isn't working out with him.

I couldn't quite see a way forward at the time and eventually just read a book while he messed around. In the past I managed to play a melodica while he played an acoustic. And it was music, but relatively crude. When it comes to being 'original' he's reduced to just repetitively playing a few chords as opposed to finding some random string of notes and then working with that string... But then perhaps two people improv'ing together means one has to keep it simple and repetitive.

So, just not sure how to work that.

Instead would make more sense for me to make tracks that have space left open for guitars and/or vocals. If I really want to collaborate with people. Which I think I do. So, I shall throw together such things. I think I could very easily throw together ten such tracks in a single day, just as a palette maybe for someone else to throw ideas at, and then back and forth.

...to be honest though, what I really want to do is just improv with someone. This fellow can definitely play a guitar but just isn't to that point yet.

I guess it just depends on what you do. If you just practice other people's music then you never get any good at improv'ing? I very early on would spend hours trying to improv on the piano, driving my family crazy as I hit endless wrong notes and slowly got better at identifying the right possibilities... You want to reach the point where you play a note and then in your head you hear what you want to come next and the instrument is just an extension of you, like your voice, and so you simply play what you wanted to come next. When nothing's coming next in your mind, then you can just wander around a bit while (usually) staying in key....