I'd say "I'm new!" but that's a lie

But I suppose I'll try again!
Hi! My name is Dylan! (aka fadingfebruary, aka overwelcome...)

I've done utau since 2010 / 2011 ish, but because of my severe social anxiety I've stayed mostly to myself within this fandom. Don't pity me though, it's on me to deal with -- so how about I try to deal with it!

So instead of just poking my head out and saying "hi," let me ask a question : what do you all find are accessible ways for people to get to know others not just in this fandom but online in general? I want to fight off my default inclination to hide away. But like, do people still use skype? What's a discord can I eat it? And other similar questions. Maybe I'm just overthinking it and should just jump in?

Some more about me: I went to university and studied mathematics; I've done like a bazillion Japanese voicebanks but have been focusing my efforts on English as of late. I'm a dork who puns too much and generally likes nerdy things. I draw, write, and have begun self-teaching myself music theory -- personally I find music theory incredibly fun and am mad I didn't start learning sooner!

Hi Alky! I hope you had a lovely day too! Just been having to drive my little sister all over town because we live away from home and I'm the defacto adult now, taking her to the doctor and everything rofl. Oh and nice pun! :P
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Hi Haichou! I am def. going to try to jump into all of those things~ Math was fun for me, and you can do some really cool things with numbers! But this is the advice I give to people now that I've gone through all of college: the people that succeeded in whatever major they did cultivated enough passion about it to want to learn above and beyond the classroom. Not that you have to be all math all the time to succeed -- I def wasn't -- but I was surprised how often some of the kids would talk about extra readings and things they had learned outside of the classroom just because they wanted to.

Secondly, whatever you want to do, start by looking at job openings for the job you might want at the end of your education, because it'll give you clues that your professors might not give you. ie, the careers I wanted usually require a background in programming and knowing that before college, I would've focused more on taking extra programming classes. But my professors didn't really clue me into that.

(And everyone says this one but being friends with your professors leads to more job opportunities / recommendations at the end rofl)

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@ Partial I struggle with it too but I'm a math-y person so it's like, music is just numbers!! Keys/Scales? That's just numbers. Chord progressions? Number patterns. It's been blowing my mind but I'm admittedly not good at it yet haha.

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@ Shasta saaaame. I had one or two close friends and was becoming more active a few years back but then life happened...oops >n<. I agree, I don't wanna rush myself but I gotta push myself a bit or I just won't do it. Thank you for the encouragement though, it means a lot!

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(I thought responding to everyone in one post rather than spamming the thread with 4 replies would be less obnoxious but staring at this wall of text I'm not so sure..I tried though lol!)