[FR] Trashy f-close

I've always been a bit of a recluse, and I historically liked tight groups of friends better than just meeting everybody at a big social event. Of course that shit's got to go, because there's really only so much you can achieve in life if you're paranoid of being all by yourself among strangers. A big barcrawl was going to happen this weekend and the idea of going there all by myself without knowing anybody was making me really nervous and uncomfortable, so for a while I figured I shouldn't bother, but then I realized that I was letting my anxienty and inexperience decide what I could and couldn't do in life, and so I said fuck it, I'll go and make friends right there on the spot. I've never had to do that for an entire day, but what better occasion to learn? It's also something Style advocates a lot, if there's something that makes you uncomfortable, do it like a boss.

Anyway, I ended running into a few friends at the event, was very social with everybody and excited about meeting new people (met like two dozen people..) and so on. The fun part was of course the girls, and I got to say that I was not in the right mindset (and kind of anxious) for the first half of the day, which was unfortunate, but later on as the booze really kicked in and my buddy took a chubby for the team so I could make out with a cuter chick, I figured I could make something happen that night. I opened a girl at a bar who was with a group (none of whom were really paying attention) and she looked interested, but I lost her pretty fast as I couldn't understand a single word of what she was saying because of how loud it was in there.
Towards the end of the night we ended up at a club, and before going in I exchanged a few lines with a girl that my friend was trying to hit on all night, without any result. Later as everybody was dancing (first time for me approaching women on the dance floor, late bloomer, I know) I caught up with her again and we escalated a couple of times, the first time she ran away until I caught up with her again later and we made it all the way to makeout and hands all over the place, at which point she went something like "my place is a few blocks away", but then she said she still had to "think about it" at which point I replied with "Whatever, your loss" and immediately took off to purposefully dance with a group of cute girls nearby making sure she could see that I didn't really care and was still having fun, and that her not giving it up didn't bother me for a second. Later on I caught up with her again as she was leaving (passing purposefully right next to me) and I asked her if she was leaving, and when she said yes I said "Alright, let's go then", to which she said "Hmm, I don't know", and I responded with "You think too much" which I somehow managed to make sound very confident and so we ended up in a cab together, then at her place for a f-close. First ONS here.

Learnings:

- I need to go a lot easier on the booze. Does anybody know how to be able to avoid it completely without coming off as a dork? First of all, I get really sluggish/slurry when well toasted, far from the classy image I'm trying to convey.
- After a good 8-10 hours of doing the hopping and meeting people, and being well done, I reached this state of Nirvana with little AA left, so I not only could dance my ass of shamelessly in front of groups of girls, while having this big grin on my face the entire time, but I could be very assertive as well in what I was saying. The problem is that it took an entire fucking day to get there, and likely inhebriation was a huge part of it. My goal is to achieve that state off the bat, and without any substance at all, how? Practice?
- Beer goggles, I'll leave it at that.
- Cougars. The girl I ended hooking up with was probably a good 10 years older than me, even though she looked great for her age, and you couldn't easily tell. A 6-7 at best, but I'm guessing I can't be too picky as a beginner AFC. Also as someone who dates girls anywhere between my age and 5 years younger, this was fucking weird. I wanted to get the ONS badge out of the way, but from now on I'm going to be a lot pickier.
- How do you deal with loud crowded locales when talking to a girl in a big mob? It's a clusterfuck...

Date Report

First date with a girl met online today. She was the one to message me in the first place, which is usually a great sign of interest. She was a 7, I could tell she was on the chubbier side, but there was definitely something cute to her which made up for it.

We meet pretty late at a popular bar in her area, about 20 mins drive from where I live. I arrive early, chat it up with both the greeter and the waitress with whom I exchange names and I jokingly ask her stuff. She seems to be really into me, I'm sure it's part of her job.

Anyway, the date arrives, we sit next to each other at a table and order drinks. We discuss my choice of wine and the choice of the place. The challenge for me was to find the right time to kino, she was right next to me, but I couldn't figure out WHEN to do it. I think I did it a couple of times, and one time the timing was off and it felt quite awkward. She on the other hand was naturally "poking" my leg with her hand under the table to get my attention, which felt more like her doing kino on me, pretty awesome.

Anyway, the place gets really loud, and we decide to move to the next bar. Unfortunately at the new place we have to sit quite far apart in front of each other, which made kino basically impossible, and the conversation went stale pretty fast. My wry and absurd sense of humor didn't seem to work too well on her, which made things awkward. At the end I told her that I had to be up early the next day and we left. The date was concluded with a fairly feeling-less hug, and a pretty weak last sentence by me (something retarded like "Oh let me know if you're up to anything interesting").

To be honest the last part of the date felt very forced and the conversation was uninteresting. It felt like she had nothing of interest to say, no experiences she wanted to share, no interests to tell me about. It's partly her fault for not being that exciting of a person, and partly mine for not helping her tell me more. The weak sense of humor, or lack thereof was also a big turnoff. It could have been a fun f-close, but since I didn't even feel like going in for the kiss (there was mabye a 30% chance of that happening) nothing else was going to happen.

Did well:

- talked to the service people in both places, established social value by being known by the waitress even before the date walked in (Wygant's suggestion)
- teased the girl a little bit
- was quite easygoing

Did not well:

- kino is still akward
- conversation got very stale
- choice of locale was sub-par and not very helpful for a date/kino
- talked way too much, why won't I shut the fucking yapper?
- I was relaxed, but I felt my body language and posture were out of control most of the time. Need to get less booze in next time?
- Not even close to being able to kiss on the first date. Again, could have gone for it, but the prerequisites didn't feel there. As the kino video says, it should feel like a natural small step rather than a huge leap forward.

Gettin' there!

So apparently as of today I reached 159lbs, down from 173 this February. I haven't been in the 150s for maybe 10 years now, and so it feels like a huge improvement. I still have love handles, plenty of gut fat and a huge ass, but I'm now hopeful that it will all go away in the next 6 months or so.

My regimen is Ori Hofmekler's Warrior Diet with 2-3 days a week of cardio/HIIT and 3 days a week of solid weight lifting including deads, squats and various presses. It takes up a lot of time, some of which I often feel could be used more productively by working on my game, but it might be worth it in the end if being in top shape gives me the confidence I always lacked because of being a fatty.

First daygame report, not much happening yet.

I felt that today was the first day that I actually went out with the intent to open on someone and see where that went. I was running a few errands around the local stores, and I realized that this would have been a great occasion to try a few things out. I usually shop pretty late, especially grocery shopping after 10-11pm, so being out at 4pm the scene was very different.

In any case, I'm at Fred Meyers looking for random junk. I'm also constantly paying attention around myself to see if there's someone I could approach. For 15 mins it's just older couples or housewives, nothing interesting. Then I pick up a big trash can (which I needed..) and decide to stroll through the cosmetics section as I thought I had seen a good looking silhouette there from the distance. As I'm walking carrying the huge fucking trashcan in my hands, I see a 9 standing in one of the aisles. She hadn't seen me. I wasn't really scared, but I also didn't know what to do. I walked into an adjacent aisle and then we crossed paths. All I could do was say "Hi" and smile and walk by.. those were my 3 seconds, gone. I guess what I should have done was approach her the first time I saw her from the back and say something like "Hi, my name is blabla, I don't usually do this, but I saw you from far away and I knew I wanted to meet you", but that didn't even cross my mind. Also even if it did, it's doubtful I would have done it.

On my way out, walked by a 7 who was doing her own thing, and I also didn't do anything about it. Still didn't know what to say to her.

At the grocery store, this cute girl was standing right behind me picking salads or something like that, and I was looking at almonds. We spent about 10 seconds there, and I was trying to think of something to day. The best I could think of was "Hm do you know which almonds are better?", which sounded so retarded at the time that I just shut up and stood there for a while. I felt that she was purposefully standing right next to me, testing me to see if I would have said anything... No clue what I should have said, nothing good was coming up.

In the end, I was aware of my surroundings, noticed opportunities where I might have missed them in the past, and I tried to think of things to say. You could say that it's basically Wygant's 7 day challenge, except I really wish I could just bite the bullet and say something.

I think the 3 second rule is the key here. I'm overthinking what to say. Now I just need to grow some balls and blurt something out.

A few things I learned from The Game

Reading The Game has been as illuminating as it was for everybody else, and like many I decided to integrate at least a few of the learnings from the book into my life. These were specifically things that Style did to improve his personal attractiveness and appeal:

• Alexander Technique: I took this for about two months, and I feel it helped me a lot with my posture and body language issues. I've always had really really awful posture and after paying attention to myself over a few weeks, I noticed that I had a very weak and beta body language, which was clearly hurting the way I was being perceived. While the posture will take a long time to rewire until it is well ingrained in my mind, the body language part is something I've been more successful with and something I hope will fixed forever. David Wygant's approach is what I've been looking for: When you walk into a room, walk in tall, dominant, like you own the place. Smile, say hi to everybody, be comfortable, be fun and easy going.
• Salsa: Did this for about two months as well. While I didn't particularly enjoy the activity as there was too much to learn in too little time, it definitely gave me confidence and hopefully more grace to my movements.
• Lasik: No more glasses, I don't need any help with looking any more nerdy that I need to. Great decision in my opinion.
• Style: Brushed up on male fashion by reading a couple of books, being a regular visitor of the reddit Male Fashion Advice section and by watching tons of Aaron Marino's videos on youtube. I definitely have a much better understanding of what fits well and how to better present myself. Now if only I could..
• Lose a couple of pounds. Went from 180lbs in early 2009 to about 160 right now, which is a big change. I'm definitely a lean guy at this point, and likely once I reach 150 or about 8-10% fat I'll go into bulking mode again to put on some meat.
• New hairstyle. Still not sure about how this whole emo Trent Reznor this is working for me, but it's a change, and if I don't like it long term, it's gonna turn into something else. Might even dye my hair black, we'll see.
• More facial care. Shaved the nasty beard-like thing, paying a lot more attention to those stray hairs, I think I look much sharper.

I believe this is pretty much all for now. It's good progress, but I wonder if this is all fast enough. Certainly doesn't seem quick enough to me.

Something new.

Reading David Wygant's Always Talk To People has been a big inspiration for me all week. It's certainly a big pill to swallow, lots of concepts to tackle all at once (I might end up failing because I try to do it all in one shot), but I can already tell the difference.

Having read up on kino as well, I've been mixing meeting new people with very basic kino with fairly good results. I started using it earlier this week with my friends by gently and very naturally giving them pats on the shoulders, fist bumping, high-fives and other very innocuous gestures.
I somehow managed to remember the name of Doug the bartender and of Andrew the car shop manager, names that I usually would have forgotten within 15 seconds. I also struck a conversation with the Fedex guy, shook his hand thanking him for spending time looking into my stolen packages. Feels great.

Another adventure of mine was figure drawing a naked girl for the first time. First of all, I've always been awful at any form of artistic expression, and since this was so ingrained in my head it was a fairly uncomfortable thought. My brain was saying: "Why would you do this? You'll just be laughed at by everybody", and so I had to tell myself that nobody actually cared, and that I wasn't trying to prove anything to anybody, I was just trying something new for the first time, getting out of my comfort zone.

The night ended up going great. My friend and I had a wonderful dinner at a local bar, meeting the bartender mentioned above, then spent a couple of hours at the art studio talking to people and drawing the model. There was such a friendly atmosphere, the vast majority of attendants heavily baked and PBR copiously available.

Looking forward to trying something new again very soon!

First post.

Welp, there goes the first post.

This is an anonymous blog created to keep track of my progress as a young man on his journey towards achieving high levels of confidence, attraction and excitement in life. I will likely share this with others at some point, but for now it's mostly a way for me to motivate myself and hopefully one day see how far I came, and where I started.