A bad country for gods

I just finished Neil Gaiman's American Gods. There's something in there that's relevant to Lover's Lanes, but I'm not sure what yet. I doubt I'll meet any gods on the road, and if I do I'll have to change their names anyway so you'll never know. If I figure out what the relevant part is I'll post it.

I wish I could figure it out, because tonight I'm having trouble thinking of what to put in this space. Since my trip to the New Age place last weekend I've been worried I am just not extroverted enough for this trip -- or perhaps not open enough? not agreeable enough? too neurotic? -- worried, in any case, that I'm temperamentally out of my depth. I'm terrified about how I'll come across to the other person. I guess that's because I'm working without a mask. This isn't tutoring or shopping. I'm doing something I actually want to be doing and making no pretense about it, which means I'm showing a part of myself to strangers that I usually show only to friends, and sometimes maybe not even to them. That's fair, because of course that's what I'm asking my subjects to do for me in telling me their stories. But I guess like all guys I'm worried that if I expose myself I'll be laughed at. Or lectured... or pranked... or ignored. Being politely brushed off like a panhandler -- even that would hurt. I'm not the salesman type who deals with rejection by just trying again with a smile as bright as ever. It's not totally impossible I could adopt that attitude as a mask, but then the journey would be work, like the other things I do with masks on, wouldn't it?...

And yet there's a conflict here in that my wiser self doesn't believe in masks. I don't mean he disapproves of them, I mean he literally doesn't think they exist. He thinks we have a lot of different faces and all of them are real. He agrees that some are less comfortable than the others, but says that usually the discomfort comes from unfamiliarity. He also thinks that when a face is really needed it will be there.

I'm not sure where that leaves me. It's much easier to be wise than to act wise.