Well here we go....

Who am I
I am a 22 year-old guy, looking to improve my overall social skills, and ultimately get more attractive girls in my life.

I am not used to failure. Almost everything I've ever attempted in my life I have succeeded....

In my life I find I get bored, and attach myself to one topic, one area of life and focus everything into it.

Some of the examples have been:

Online business while I was in high school

I was bored one day at home and decided to look for ways to make money. I had about $500 in cash saved from Birthdays and Christmases. I went onto a drop shipping company and started my own eBay business selling fake ralph lauren polos. I realize now this was a stupid idea, but it worked for me and I managed to make a ton of money before getting in trouble with customs for importing counterfeit goods.

I then started listing ebooks on ebay, I would buy the rights to 50 different ebooks and list them on eBay for .99c, and list these 50 books every hour. I managed to set it up so I could literally push one button on my desktop each day and I was making ~$50/day.

This little obsession was over pretty quickly, because eBay banned the sale of digital goods. At this point I had more than enough money for a kid my age, so I decided to branch into something different, another hobby.

Magic Tricks

I watched David Blaine’s TV series, street magic and was instantly hooked. I was always a fan of magic when I was a really young boy. I started researching how each of David Blaine’s effects was done. Once I knew how, I had to learn to do them myself.

Literally every day I got home from school, I would sit down in front of my mirror and practice card tricks for hours on end. Once i had them down, I would upload them via webcam onto a magic forum for my videos to be critiqued and reviewed.
I ended up getting very good at close-up magic (as you would expect after practicing ~5hrs/day for months at a time).

I started doing some shows here and there, I wasn’t actively pursuing a career in magic, people who had seen me performing would ask if I could do their engagement party, or their friend’s wedding. I even got to the point where I uploaded some instructional videos on the net and was making a small coin every month.

Computer Games
So once I got into uni, and drifted a little from my friend groups, I started procrastinating from my study and playing computer games.

I’m not going to get into this too much, but in every computer game I played, I would study and work on to be the best. While I didn’t get to the absolute best of any of these games, I always did very well.

University

I always pushed myself pretty hard in uni, if I wasn’t sidetracked with some random money making scheme or a small hobby, I would be focusing on my study.

I studied a dual degree Electrical Engineering/IT. It was a 5 year degree, and I got through 4 years until this year, where I deferred (see next example). I maintained a very solid GPA of ~6 (1 being the lowest, 7 being the highest). This is the equivalent of averaging a distinction for all my subjects. I was on track for honors, but then I found a new hobby, one that wasn’t just a game, one that I could make good money from…

Online Poker

I got introduced to online poker by my father, he was watching it on TV and told me some guys were making good money online. I was skeptical at first so I hit the forums and found out that there were actually people out there making more money than any engineer could ever make.

So I decided to give it a shot. I came into it extremely confident… I remember the first time I did a *‘sweat session’ with a guy from the forums. I said to him, ‘I’m going to beat this thing, I’ve had hobbies before and I know all I need to do is dedicate myself and I can get to the top’. The guy kinda laughed it off and that was that. This guy was playing the NL10 at the time, this means the tables he was buying in at were $10 tables.

*A sweat session is where he watches me play online poker using a screensharing program, so he can comment on my decisions.

Six months down the track I was playing NL200, and he was playing NL25/NL50. I had surpassed a guy who had been playing online poker for 2yrs+ in 6 months. I knew I had a good shot at this.

It’s about 11 months down the track and I’m just shy of my first 100k profit. If I can continue with my current winrate (and I don’t expect to ‘continue’, I expect to improve), this would put me on an annual salary of ~150-200k/yr.

I will finish my last year of uni next year, but this year I’ve just been playing poker full time, and spending a lot of my time with my girlfriend…

Girlfriend?

For the past two years I’ve been with this girl, she really is the most incredible girl I’ve ever met in my life. The first girl I can say I was genuinely in love with.
I would die for this girl.

Our relationship was so perfect, except for one thing. I am an atheist, and she is a Christian. Her parents were very often making me feel uncomfortable with religion. I also couldn’t have sex with this girl, go away with here, sleep over or have her sleep over. I felt like I had two sets of parents.

If I didn’t go to church with her, she got asked questions from her parents. Even though they knew I was not Christian whatsoever. This last week just passed, we broke up the relationship.

I felt that with the problems we are already facing, and me feeling a kind of resentment towards her religion because of the limits and constraints it was putting on my life, things just weren’t going to work. If this girl wasn’t Christian, I would have married her.

However, things wouldn’t work with kids, she would want her kids to be Christian, I did not want this. I don’t really want to get into this too much, but the bottom line is that our beliefs were too different.

Sick life buddy, why are you here?

I’m here because last night for the first time in ~3 years I went out to a club (after speaking to my brother about ‘gaming’ girls now that I’m single). I decided to not drink for the first time, as I had heard it hurts your game. Without realizing this is something I have NEVER done, go out to meet strangers completely sober, I was in for a massive wakeup/reality check.

I have read the game and watched some PUA stuff on YouTube, and everything just made so much sense, I felt like the stuff they were presenting was obvious, this should come easy to me.

However, last night I felt ‘approach anxiety’. I don’t just mean I felt it. I really really felt it. To the point I felt shaky, insecure, completely out of my element. I suddenly realized that I do not have social skills. Being with my girlfriend and only hanging out with my close friends for the past few years has put me out of the loop.

I ended up approaching a group of girls with the “Do you guys believe in spells” opener, and I was immediately shutdown. The girl I looked at looked up at me with a blank face like I just asked her if she liked the taste of dogshit, and said “no”. And stared back at her phone, I suddenly found myself sitting there staring at 3 girls with the very real possibility of being rejected. Something I for some arrogant reason hadn’t thought would be a reality.

I turned to her friend, what about you, do you believe in spells? She just with the same blank expression said “no”. So I said, “well the reason I ask is I’ve got this friend right… he’s here tonight you’ve gotta meet him…”, all girls gave me their attention now, but kind of with very uncomfortable looks on their faces. I started the story about how my friend met up with this chick, then found out she was into witchcraft and stuff, with a few DHV spikes and negs thrown in.

Half way into my story, this girl looks at me and says in a very bitchy tone “who told you to come talk to us”. So I just try to laugh it off and say I’m just trying to find someone who knows more about this ‘witchcraft’ stuff. At this point my wing comes in and says ‘hey man we’ll just be at the bar downstairs’. This small interaction was enough to break eye contact with the girls, and one of them left to take her shot at a pool table, while the other two just stared down at the girls phone. I felt an utter feeling of rejection, my opener sucked, my story didn’t get their attention, they obviously found this awkward and unnatural.

I turned around without saying goodbye and just walked down the stairs to meet my mates. The feeling I felt was really nothing I expected. I thought if I got rejected I could just brush it off, but I really just felt super lame.

I had a feeling like, wow, I just approached some girls, HB6s/HB7s at best and got completely rejected. I felt like these girls have no idea who I am, I felt like I just got shutdown by people of lower value than me (I need to drop this arrogance). These girls weren’t friendly towards me, I felt like they were just being such massive bitches.

Then I remembered what Strauss said, if I think a girls being a bitch, it means I fucked up. While in this club setting surrounded by people I started analyzing my approach. I started thinking what I could have done better, why were they so harsh towards me, how can I get these girls to see that I’m a very interesting person and genuinely have a lot of value.

It was at this point I realized I have a lot to learn…

To put it bluntly, I am a social retard at this point. I need to work on my problems and fix them. I would love to get to a point where I can feel socially comfortable. Have the confidence to approach girls, and do it sober.

The plan

I feel like this is just another game, another ‘topic’ that I can master. I just need to practice and study. I decided that I’d start a journal right from day 1 so everyone can witness what it takes to go from literal social retard -> pick up guru.

I'm not going to stop until I reach mastery.

Enjoy the show and let the journey begin……