I am going to stop being self-conscious and start blogging.

"The only explicit rule on the Blogosphere is to blog, and “blog” is like it sounds, it’s unformed, it’s wet, sloppy and rubbery. It’s like the way a pirate’s brain feels when he drinks too much grog, it’s blog, like the way an amoeba is blog. The only implicit rule of blogging is to be massively self indulgent and self referential and go on at agonizing and irrelevant length like a garrulous drunk reciting Vogon poetry." (Jonathan Zap)

That's part of my problem; I am often accused of being massively self-indulgent and self-referential. I have become ashamed of this tendency and thus curb it at every turn.
But I still maintain that to have a Self and to be aware of that Self is life's greatest joy.