Worse to interact too much or too little?

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OK, right now I am at a crossroads where I fear that if I don't reach out to certain people I will appear to be snubbing them, but if I do try to reach out to these people I am going to clam up and/or make a mess of things (partly due to my current emotional state, partly because thats what happened last time and I currently don't have ideas on what I'd do differently).

On the one hand, I know from experience that "just trying harder" at this stuff does about as much good as bashing my head against a wall. On the other hand, I realize that I tend to avoid social interaction unless I think I can do things just so, which of course leads to me interacting very little if at all. So now I'm not sure if it would be worse to reach out to these people and potentially make an ass of myself, or to stay in my little shell and potentially make them feel snubbed

People are going to disagree with me on this - I can just tell - but I occassionally put myself in sitiuations that are hard for me socially - just to see if I can do them - and I can't and I feel like a miserable failure for weeks afterwords . . .

Just yesterday I decided to help a guy I know with a fundraiser - and I knew damn well that there would be 300 people there - but I also knew that being a staff person I could hide out in the back and ignore them - plus he's like one of my all time favorite people and I think you should do things for people like that . . .
I should warn you that I found out this morning that I have strep so being physically sick may have made this worse . . .
Anyway, I was fine running around with him picking up supplies and listening to him complain about all the fine details of this thing . . . I didn't mind helping them set up or anything like that - but the minute the people got there - oh my God - I just about died - I spent most of the rest of the time pacing around in the back - one of our jobs was supposed to be to take food and drinks out and I just couldn't do it - I had to tell people that if I go out there I'm going to have a panic attack . . . one time I did go out where all the people were to ask the 2nd bartender if he needed more drink mix and just about died . . .
I thought it might be fun to just stand at the edge of the room and watch everyone and watch them interact but it just made me sad that they seemed to be honestly enjoying themselves . . . and that just got worse and worse until anytime anyone tried to make eye contact with me I'd turn my back on them and look away . . .
Not a good deal . . .

Anyway, I'm going to go back to my ideal way of interacting with the world - which I keep saying is like being a ghost - I can interact with people through distance contact - like email or making things for them or manipulating their environment in some other way (like my job - it is PERFECT for this kind of thinking) - but I just am not going to beat my head against the 'traditional sociality' wall anymore - I am not good at that and I don't really think I care to be good at it . . .
I'll be crunching numbers and making scenery for fundraisers from now on . . .

I understand. You don't know what to do.

Depending on how important the people are to me i'd risk interacting with them too much. If they aren't very important(fellow students) just forgo interaction, you aint never gonna see em again. If you are in a position in your life where you need to interact with the same people for the forseeable future, i recommend risking the overinteraction. I don't know how social you are, but being considered the weird guy is better than not interacting with people at all. Infact, if you can work it right, you can make good friends using that angle.

How can you get better without trying?