How can I turn over a new leaf next year and find love?

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My company had it's annual dinner the other night, and I was the only one without a date. Everyone is married, or paired off with someone. I mean I'm happy for them, but envious too. I see the women my male coworkers are dating, and wish I had someone like that. I look at them and compare them to me, and they seem like everything I'm not - handsome, charming, funny, outgoing.

I know a need to improve my self confidence, and a lot of other things. I eat healthy and work out and attend yoga class, and I have my aspirations and ambitions. I'm doing well, but I want to find someone to enjoy life with. I'm trying to figure out how I can do it. I've tried online dating for years, but the success has been limited. I need to meet real people out in the real world. But how?

No surprise to any of you, but I'm just terribly averse to most social places. Bars and clubs and such just freak me out. I tried to go to one, once, and found myself just standing outside the door pacing, unable to go in. It's not just the noice and everything inside. It's that I don't like alcohol, and don't want to get drunk, and I'm afraid of what I'll say, and what I'll do, and that I'll go in and everybody will just see right through me.

Conversely, the places I love the most, really aren't conducive to chatting. I love bookstores and antiques shops and libraries and museums but people there always seem very much in their own world, or preoccupied and I don't want to be rude or intrusive. And again, I never know what to say. I just feel like no matter where I go, I don't belong.

To give an example, I'm a good distance runner. Good enough that I can win races from time to time. You'd think that that'd be a perfect way to meet people, meet women, but I still find I'm unable to engage with folk. With some, I fear they'll be intimidated by me because I'm a faster runner. Or if I'm in a race with people faster than me, I'll feel invalid because why would they want me, when they could date the guy who won the race? Why do they want the runner up? I can't win.

I know a lot of this is in my head. I want to change, to be better at this. But how can I, when I can't even summon the courage to talk to a woman I see out on the street? When I cannot think of a thing to say, a single ice breaker? When I'm so afraid that she'll dismiss me, reject me, judge me. But then again, I guess I'm judging them every time I opt not to talk to them?

How can I change? How can i get better? How can I fit in and be confident and find love?

Sorry to hear your difficulties.
I think you need to build self confidence before start anything and it takes a lot time and commitment, which is why most of us fail.

My advice: forget about all the "failures" of the past, and proceed as if you're on a blank slate.

I think you've probably learned lots of lessons, and will have a better chance of success this year. You have lots going for you: your brains being one of your attributes.

When I was 10, in 1971, I saw a movie called "A New Leaf." It is a comedy--though I started to take the phrase "turning a new leaf" quite seriously after I saw that movie.

I take it seriously to this day. Last year might have sucked---but the new year is the new year--and you could make use of what you've learned during your "failures" of the previous year to improve your overall chances during the new year.

At least you have aesthetic/artistic interests which will attract women who are more "your speed" than most women.