You are as good as anybody else.

The shy/avoiding eye contact thing I had when I was young. The thing was I loved to draw and was fascinated by faces, so I would look at faces while sitting on the train, thinking about the features and how I would draw them. A while after if there were regular commuters I used to imagine what their lives might be like, I had whole imaginary back stories for them and no one knew but me. Lol. The thing is there are lots of little distraction techniques we can learn to divert our energy from anxiety, it's finding what works for you.