Day 30+

So it has been a while since I posted. The reason is that I spent about ten days in Asia, and didn't have traditional field reports to write. I did force myself to go out every night but one, but I couldn't talk to anyone because I don't speak a word of Chinese or Japanese.

Fortunately, there are lots of loud venues where that doesn't matter. On one particular night at a huge club in Shanghai, I felt up a cute little Asian chick on the dance floor. That was pretty sweet - never had that happen before. I did a lot of approaches, but the number three sticks in my mind.

I have noticed that I can only approach when I'm in the presence of friends. It doesn't matter whether they are helping me - for some reason I am conditioned to be afraid of approaching when I have no one nearby. On Friday, I was at the MFA for first friday. I walked around the place, lost, until some of the Lair guys showed up. Then I opened a set in the room, walked into the other room, and opened another set. At no point did I have a wing, but some psychological switch flipped and I could approach.

I'm going to close this by posting something that I wrote for the BL. I went out on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and to the GSF for daygame on Saturday, so I did 20+ approaches this weekend. I'm not sure that posting a field report is going to be be that useful, and I'm too tired.

I'm going to declare this 30-day completed. Sure it took a bit longer than 30 days, but if I had one more weekend in town (or in the US for that matter), I would have completed it.

Here are some takeaways that I noticed from this weekend:

- I need to get in the habit of asking for the number. I have a lot of sets where I should, but I don't. I'm sure that some of them will flake, but its just a step on the way to escalating the full close.
- I'm definitely doing significantly better. My inner game is better than it used to be, and my skills are sharper. People smile at me when I walk down the street.
- I still have inner game issues. I guess that pretty much everyone will always have inner game issues. Inner game is the game, and its all about incremental improvement.
- I'm getting more shit tests. Interestingly, I got far fewer shit tests than before at the more laid back bar I went to on Thursday, and more at the mega-club on Saturday. A couple of times, girls shit-tested me when I delivered the opener. They didn't ignore me - they told me in slightly nicer words to fuck off. In both situations, I stayed in for a little while, and they didn't completely shut me out. I think that had I successfully plowed through the shit, the set would have opened nicely. I just didn't strike them as quite high-value enough to open them, so they shit tested me. But I'm guessing that I was close. The last time that girls tried to shit test me out of opening, I walked away with my tail between my legs. I think that the proper strategy in this case is to neg the target (who is inevitably the one who tries to blow you out), and then plow through.

Overall, the change in shit test patterns could mean that my skills have improved to the point where I'm congruent enough for the easier venue, but something isn't quite on at the harder venue. I was also a bit off on Saturday, so that could have been part of the problem.

Anyways, I'm proud of myself and my progress. This stuff isn't easy. I'm doing well. If you told me that I would be going out to clubs and talking to random girls, I wouldn't believe you. The same way that I don't really believe that I will ever be pulling. But its going to happen - I know it deep down somewhere although the prospect frightens me.
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So over the past few days, I have started to notice some patterns in my behavior.

I usually go into a set with a canned opener (I change it up fairly often to keep things fresh), and then pretty much run natural from there. I typically thread change off the opener pretty quickly, because you can only talk about "tigger or eeyore?" for so long without sounding silly. When I first started out, my goal was to thread change once off the opener, and then I could eject, but over time I've managed to hook and then stay in set for longer and longer. During day game, I can typically run for as long as I want, but at night, I find that sometimes I eject from a set that seems to be going quite well. From what I can reconstruct, I get nervous for some reason, and when that happens, I freeze up and don't know what to say next. Typically I'll eject, although sometimes i brave it out and stay in.

If I let more than a few seconds go by, I often blow out at this point (I remember one set on Friday in particular). I think that it happens because I look awkward when I get nervous and don't know what to say, and the girl can instantly sense the vibe. When I manage to keep cool, I can usually resurrect the set and keep going, but that doesn't always happen. Something tells me that rolling out and switching places with one of the girls might be helpful and give me a few seconds to collect myself, but I'm not sure.

One of my regular wings and I have discussed this. One solution we have come up with is to have some stories canned and ready to go for those situations (kind of like when the band takes a break and they put on some music in the interim). I think that's a solid plan, although I remember when I first got started and couldn't hold a set worth shit. I thought, "I'll just come up with a routine stack that I can run, and that will be that." Well, a whole bunch of approaches later, I still don't have a routine stack, but I manage to hold sets ok. When I'm on, I do the right thing at the right time (well, at least for my level), but when I'm off, it doesn't matter. I guess that when I'm off, I also get blown out with openers that usually work well for me.

Thoughts? One thing that just occurred is that this may just be an indication that I'm doing better. Before, I usually blew out while delivering the opener, and rarely managed to hook a set. With the exception of clubs like Gypsy, I have started to hook a significant percentage of my sets (another way to say this is that I'm hooking 6s-8s but not 9s and 10s). Maybe some part of me just hasn't accepted that, and sometimes my brain does a double take. Hopefully I will get used to that as I get more experience.

Another thing I've noticed is that a lot of times I run a fairly solid set, but then don't ask for the number. I stay in set for a reasonable length of time, have a good conversation, the girl seems interested, etc... but then for some reason I say goodbye without attempting to close (another situation is that the girl gets pulled away by a friend who had left us alone for a few minutes). Groove was working on this with me at the GSF, but I was unable to ask for the number. I think it has to do with fear of rejection. Judging from the way that the sets have been going (I get plenty of IOIs), I'm pretty sure that I would get some of these numbers if I asked. And even if I struck out, that would give me valuable information about my performance.

I'm working on trying to can a number close routine - I guess this is why a lot of the gurus have developed kiss close routines. Its easy to keep the interaction on the same level that its going on, but elevating the interaction takes conscious work.