Is it possible that the actual problem is fear of failure, and/or fear of mediocrity, rather than shyness per se?
When you meet new people, do you show them a different you, one who doesn't write songs or think about writing apps or starting businesses? One who is safe from criticism, because he/she doesn't do anything that would be worth criticising?
The two things are not necessarily related, but I've come to see both of them in myself. For a long time I've had two very different sets of thoughts and activities, internal ones that I didn't tell people about and external ones that I did. I convinced myself that noone IRL was interested in the first set of stuff (projects, niche interests, thought experiments) so I just kept it all to myself, sharing it online or (mostly) not at all. It's only recently that I'm starting to let more of that out, overcoming the fear of either boring people, sounding silly, or being ridiculed.
Things that have helped me have been:
- Getting involved with a group of people (IRL) who are interested in the same things. In my case it's been helping found a Hackerspace, but in your case music could be an equally good outlet and support group. This has helped me get used to talking about those things, and it's helped me feel more legitimate about these things being of interest and worth to other people, and not lame/useless/boring.
- Social media. It's convenient to be able to occasionally give notice of your thoughts and activities to a fairly wide group of people you know in person, without any obligation for them to respond if they don't want to or are not interested. I've been surprised at how many people have shown interest (both online and offline in social situations), though.
I still have a fair way to go. For example, I created a blog to help encourage me to push projects through to completion (or failure) instead of abandoning them early on. However, I haven't written up any of the things that I'm working on yet, instead I can always rationalise an excuse about "no time to write about it" or "not quite good enough for public consumption yet".
Wow...that's exactly the case. I have felt for a long time that I am two very different guys, one when I'm alone, my true self, and the one that meets people and doesn't tell anything about the other one, actively hiding him. I now see that the reason is that I don't want to give others a chance to criticize me.
I thought you sounded a bit like me in the OP. :).
From the vague amount of pop psychology that I know, the "two different guys" is the hallmark of an introverted personality, and totally common. Although I think the amount of difference varies between people.
It also reveals the distinction between "introverted" and "shy". We introverted people aren't necessarily shy. It's possible to have a very open, outgoing, public persona. It's just not the same persona that you have when you're by yourself, or perhaps with closest friends.
(Take with large grains of salt, as I'm not any kind of psychologist.)
