A silly moment which turned into a life lesson

I have the tendency to overthink things, it is something that I have done from childhood.
Although these thought processes have been a waste at times they have also given me great insights. Insights on interactions mostly. I tend to revisit encounters.

Today I did this with the briefest of encounters. I was running out of fuel and stopped at the local gas station. I noticed a person I know. Not really well but casually interacted with her. She was speaking outside with the owner of the gas station. When I was going to pay at the automated cash registers. My eyes locked with the person I knew. I nodded and moved on to pay. I fueled up and moved on.

Running things over in my head over and over. I felt something was weird about what happened. Then my penny dropped. The reason that I nodded was that I was too ashamed and not important enough to disrupt their conversation so I decided that a nod was sufficient. So that is something to work on.

But then all the pennies in pocket dropped. Look at this from the other persons perspective. Someone you know walks past you only giving you a nod. Not even hello or anything. That persons reaction might be "Is this guy afraid of acknowledging the fact that he knows me?"

So from now on the goal is to never give people a nod again but say hi to them. Acknowledging the fact that I know them and raising my personality on the same level as them.