Trapped in a box by how people perceive me

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I used to think of myself as someone who didn't really care what people thought about me. If I did care, I'd be into normal people things, and I'd throw my multitude of quirks out the window (well, I probably can't, but I could try, I guess). But I like who I am, and I like what I like, so I'm perfectly content with being different.

Then again, I think about the things I'd like to do in the bigger picture of life, and I hold myself back. Four years out of college and working... nothing has really changed since then. Looking to the future, when am I going to ever do something new? I want to, but I find that I just never do it. Partly, it's doubt and uncertainty that holds me back. My unfamiliarity with social situations makes me put off everything. I get these urges to venture out and do something outside my comfort zone, but then I'll back off and wonder, "What if people said, 'Oh wow, I didn't think you had any interest in that,'" which would just kill my enthusiasm. Does that make any sense? I just hate it when people comment on what I do or what I want. When I was a kid, my parents would ask, "Now are you sure this is what you want?" All that made me do was want to put it back on the store shelf.

I sometimes feel like I'm trapped in a box by people, and all they have to do is be surprised that I did something that's unlike anything I've done before, and it scares me right back into my box. For example, I've never been on a date... and it petrifies me to think about how surprised people would be when/if I'm fortunate enough for that to ever happen. It's ridiculous, I know. I shouldn't think that way.

In other words, I guess I'm not scared to be different, but I am scared to change people's perceptions about who I am, what I can do, or what I like. Deep down, I know that it's an irrational concern... I'd love to be able to just turn off that part of my brain, but I don't know how.

There are many things that I only begin to do when I changed of high school (at 15 y.o.) and many other when I changed of city (18 y.o.).

There is another aspect at play here that I see consistently in aspies that I think I should mention just for the point of it. We do what some people would call "second guessing ourselves" a lot. I don't like calling it that, though I often resort to those words because it's easier to explain to NTs that way. Instead I think it's more an issue of us needing to be certain of a situation before we can commit to that situation. We aren't per se "afraid of commitment" instead we're just to practical minded to commit to something which is "too unknown to us"