Getting over the deer-in-headlights thing
Hi all, this might be painfully elementary but thought this might be an appropriate place to ask. I'm pretty new to rpgs in general, but I've wanted to break into them for a long time. I'm super interested in them, love reading them, but I've struggled to break into actually playing them for a long time. (I'm sure I'm probably not alone in that?)
Embarrassingly, while I'm very drawn to this kind of play, in practice I think my core issue is that I'm intimidated by the actual act of roleplay. I know I'm not hopeless but it's just not really a skill I have yet. It's new to me!
When I've tried joining a game run by someone else, the moment it's my turn to think in character, say something as my character, I lock up and draw blanks. Needless to say, trying to teach myself GMing while also trying to introduce new players, has been daunting. The couple times I've tried it actually had fun for a couple sessions but I get overwhelmed quickly and feel like I've lost a handle on the campaign and don't know how to proceed after two sessions. With my PCs, NPCs, the environment, whatever, there's a lot of vagueness, talking around and describing conversations rather than actually doing dialogue, and I just don't feel able to get specific or think through the characters.
I understand it's an extremely broad question, but anybody have advice on getting more comfortable with roleplaying and starting to build that muscle?
(Edit: I posted here because these games are the ballpark of rpgs that interest me and I thought I might get advice that aligned with me here. If this is the wrong place to ask let me know and I'll take my question elsewhere. Thanks!)
Edit again: Thank you all for the avalanche of fantastic advice. I'm inspired to renew my efforts and relax a little :)