True Change and Going Out Alone

So when I first got into this, I messaged back and forth with a wise member of the community. He told me that, in order to get good at this, I had to be willing to let myself change. I didn't know what this meant at the time. Now I think I do. I don't think that has truly happened yet.

Last night, I went out by myself, thinking that my wings would show up. I spent 2.5 hours solo in the field before a few stragglers wandered in. Over that time, I opened 10 sets solo. I've gone out by myself before, but this is only the second time that I've gone out completely by myself. It was an enlightening experience.

I'm proud to say that I opened the first set within about 30 seconds of the time that I entered the first venue. It wasn't the first set that I saw, but it was the second or the third. I ran it for a while. I think that I ejected - can't remember why. At that first venue, I opened five sets. None of them completely blew out, but none lasted for more than 10-15 minutes. I think that I ejected from a few prematurely. A lot of them happened to be 2-sets (this wasn't intentional - I guess that a lot of the people in the club were 2-sets). I need to get better at managing logistics for 2-sets. I opened a mixed 2-set for fun - they did happen to be together, but they were nice.

I bounced to a second venue, which was about a 10-15 minute walk away. During the walk, my state started to crash. I started to get frustrated that I've thrown myself at this for the past four months, and all that I have to show for it is a few makeouts with drunk chicks. The only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that I had a mission, and that it was up to me to accomplish it. When you don't have wings around, the success or failure is yours; it all comes from within.

At the second venue, I continued to open. It went ok, but I had one particularly harsh blowout where the girls said that they were had to leave, and then went to another part of the club. They weren't that cute, but it did kind of get to me, probably because it was my eighth set, and I hadn't really had a good one yet. I probably came across as creepy - not completely sure why. Maybe I'm not completely comfortable with going out by myself. I opened a guy who was standing by himself, and we talked for a little while. His friends came back (2 girls, probably 6 and 8), but I didn't integrate them into the conversation. After a while I ejected.

At this point, the second state crash occurred. I stood by myself for about 20 minutes. One of my wings told me that he was bailing; the others were still MIA. I went downstairs, and then back upstairs. I decided that I still had one more set to open. If it blew out, so be it. A 2-set was standing by the stairs, so I opened it. It hooked. I think that I ran that set for 20-25 minutes. The problem (for now, at least) was that it was a 2-set, so I didn't really know how to proceed. My wings finally showed up, and one came in. The girls went to get drinks.

After that, I decided that I was done for the night. I opened one more set (friends of the bachelorette, who was really cute for a change), but it didn't hold for too long. At 1, the club closed, and I decided to go home. My wings stayed out, but I'm pretty sick of staying out until 3 am. I walked home, which was fun. Gave me some time to reflect.

So what have I learned? It is valuable to go out alone, but hard. Not hard because approaching sets is any harder, but because its the only thing you can do. No shooting the shit with your friends, unless they are new friends you just met that night. Your options are either:

1) Open sets
2) Stand around by yourself

During daygame, you can go shopping or shoot the shit with hired guns (I guess you can do the latter here), but during nightgame you don't have the options.

To be honest, being out by myself didn't really faze me - I get asked about it in a decent percentage of the sets. I tell them that I am out by myself, and that I might eventually meet up with some friends, but its too hard to coordinate. Eventually, I will get to the point where I admit that I'm by myself, and that's it. No qualification or justification needed.

I think that the hardest thing about solo nightgame is that there is no one to pump you up when your state crashes. Complete self-validation, independence from wings. This is all about you. I think that the guys who have truly succeeded hit this point. Its kind of scary, to think that the thing that leads to consistent success is the thing that most people are afraid to face.

I'm a loner, so it worries me that I'm going out alone. I tend to do stuff by myself, and it takes me longer than I could because I'm too proud to ask for help. I feel like I need to do this with others, get support. But maybe I really do need to go at it alone with some frequency. Once I have broken the dependency on others, I can use their support without guilt.

So I think that I'm going to change my default mission a bit. When I'm out alone, I need to open two guy-sets. These can either be solo guys, guys who are in guy-groups, or guys in a mixed set. My goal is to befriend the guys - learn how to be a leader of men. Maybe I can even find some wings in-field. Note that this is in addition to my 10-set goal, although time spent in guy sets does allow me to subtract from my goal.

This is hard. I'm frustrated. I feel like I've come farther than I had imagined (I went by myself to two hard venues, and had mostly normal conversations with eleven groups of people), but it isn't far enough. I want mastery, and it scares me that I don't know how to get there.

Let me define mastery. I want to be able to attract pretty much any girl that I talk to. I want to have the option to escalate with her. Every night that I'm out, I want to have the option of a strong number-close or pull.

And why do I want this? Girls are fun, girls are nice. I want to have more girls in my life. But maybe that's too externally validated. I'm going to try this again.

My goal is to be able to go out, and to truly not care. I can talk to a 10+, and not think about the outcome at all. I don't care whether I take her home - my only goal is to have fun. So my true goal is to have fun in 100% of the sets I open. The rest of the shit should figure itself out.

Alright, enough KJing for now. Time to go hunting.