Long time lurker, recently started hitting the field after months and months of reading PUA material and watching torrented (shh) DVDs.

The outer game stuff I've worked on is mostly MM, 60, and RSD Foundations, and inner game is Eckhart Tolle and RSD Blueprint. I try not to limit myself to just one style of PU, and take what I feel is useful from each school of thought (EG, the *tap tap* opener that Tyler Durden recommends in Foundations, but then a few lines from Mystery Method, or what 60 says about not breaking tension. Use what works and discard the rest)

I've got a couple of regular wingmen- some in the game, some not, and usually go out at LEAST once a week, schedule permitting.

Where I'm at right now is I'm getting over my AA (cheers RSD and Tolle ) and can successfully open any set I want once I get on a good roll. Hooking sets is generally a lot more difficult, especially earlier in the sarge, and sexual escalation also, and even more so if I am really attracted to the girl.

I'm gonna put up a couple of retrospective FRs that are from a couple of weeks back, then continue to post as they occur to records my progress in this game.

So here was my first night back out with Max after maybe 6 weeks! I was doing a blues showcase gig beforehand which went *very* well, and kinda pumped up my state (ya know being a rockstar and all that ) So i leave the gig and ditch my shit in his apartment, we catch up for maybe an hour, he hits me with some EPIC news, and we have a few drinks...

Cafe en Seine!! We rock up in the front door, and i'm eager to open my first set on the left. I get about maybe 10 feet inside, still havent opened (cos none of them were "good" enough), I look back, and Max is dancing with some chick... Literally, within ten secs! What a Bastard

I get my first set opened shortly afterwards, a four set of party girls. I opened with something natural, something along the lines of "hey listen, my buddy just got into a huge dance off, you gotta take care of me till he's finished", which was pretty self amusing, and it crashed really badly. The alpha group leader girl was like "ugh go away"... But i ploughed, and ploughed and ploughed, and SOMEHOW i managed to get her to hook. I ran through about 5-6 different topics, and it took telling her my name was Darth Vader before she cracked a smile "A HA!! You smiled, now i can stay!!" - more smiling... I called her a dork for knowing who Darth Vader was. And showing the drunk girl in the set the secret to the perfect high five. Four set opened nicely after initially crashing so badly.. Awesome.

I leave to go mingle further, I do a couple smaller sets lasting between 1-2 minutes, they are hooking so-so at this point. All natural stuff, very few routines / lines. Best set was maybe another 4 set, in which i got my photo taken with this blond chick who was definately a 9... super hot her twin wasn't bad either. And she was pretty into me. I should have number closed but didn't... Cant remember why not?

After maybe 20 mins, my state's getting better, and I open a pretty cute chick with a guy right there beside her, and the girl is doing the "i'm gonna keep dancing to ignore you" thing, but i kept PLOUGHING cos that was kinda the theme for the night. "I'm lost, my buddy is busting a move on some drunk chick, it was pretty brutal.. dont make me show you".

She's having NONE of it, the guy comes over puts his arm around her, she says "this is my brother", so I aim to disarm him with a high five, to which he leaves me hanging. Bastard. I tell him Max will give him discounted dance lessons, and he replies "look buddy, just keep going" - which i humourously re-frame as keep going with your story. So i tell him about how Max is destroying some poor girl on the dancefloor and how he looks like he needs a little style so i can hook him up with Max Girl gets super pissed at this point and SNAPS, she puts her hands on my chest and literally shoves me back about 10 feet while screaming "NO NO NO NO NO"... great, so now I look like a rapist

Next set!! Two pretty cute German girls. I opened with something silly, and hooked very nicely. Name exchange, handshake, high five, putting on each others glasses, musician babble (one of the girls was into heavy metal, and being able to name random metal bands was a huge bonus - thank you, teenage years!!). Chilled with these girls by the dancefloor for maybe ten mins. One of the girls mentioned about how social i was, and that not many people can jsut start a brand new conversation with a stranger. I told her i;ll teach her if she shows me martial arts (she was into Karate) so i had this great idea to pull someone new into the group right then, to kinda show off how awesome i was, i turn around and said "Hey!!" to literally the first person behind me with the intention of bringing them into the set.... Bad idea. Luck was against me, and he was the creepiest looking dude there, he was a libyan guy and i swear he looked like a rapist... Shit.

I knew right away it was a mistake, but he's already in the set now. And he's really trying to get stuck into Karate girl. Shit. I pathetically tried "out alpha" him with stuff like "Ah its cool that you're on your own man, i used to be like that" and other random AMOG stuff. Which was a complete waste cos he couldn't understand English. I do some damage control with the friend, talk to her for maybe 5 mins, and figure the Libyan guy will blow himself out eventually, so i bail outta the set pretty chodey. Fuck!! How'd i let this happen?

State's going down, bollocks. Next few sets were pretty crap. Another girl tells me to "leave or i'll scream" (wtf?) Ah well, its almost 3am now anyway, i'll see if Max is ready to leave... I eventually find him, and he's basically in this AMOG battle thing. Some random Irish dude apparently saw him run a couple of sets and in my humble opinion, was jealous of Max's game, so he starts interrupting all Max's sets with "He's a player, dont listen to him, he's been talking to every girl here tonight". To which Max will laugh and clap him on the shoulder to try disarm the drunken prick. I'm watching this thinking how surreal this whole Game thing is. It;s like a different reality to most random dudes. Max gets blown out of maybe 3-4 sets, and he's like "hey man, can i have some privacy, i'm here to socialise", and the dude keeps fucking Max's shit up.. he literally CANNOT do a set anymore!!

I try re-approach my Karate german girl on the dancefloor, she's dancing with the Libyan, and BLOWS me off pretty cold, and he pulls her away and turns his back to me... You absolute bastard.

So i decide to help max, and try run interference on the drunk guy, blah blah blah, random drunk talk. I turn around and max is in a 4 set which seems to be going well. Nice I send the drunkard off on his way and jump in to wing Max "Hey, this is my buddy Havona, he's a really awesome dude. Fantastic musician, great buddy of mine, really cool cat, dont steal him from me"... "Musician, really?" I was in

This four set were seated, four sisters out celebrating the oldest one's 30th Bday. Nice! The one nearest me was pretty cute, lots of IOIs, some kino, great eye contact. Blah blah blah, random small talk about being a musician...

Then - the drunk guys shows back up. Max has been working the other two sisters perfectly... So i bail pretty quickly - i figured my chick is still good if the drunk guy doesn't fuck me up - and after all, he's after Max, not me. So we exchanged facebooks (i figured a facebook is more valuable than a number cos of all the music stuff i have up here)...

End of the night.

Things I learned:

1) Sets will rarely be fully into you within the first thirty secs. This freeze out time requires you to PLOUGH, and keep talking, keep talking bro, just keep spitting things out. Something will stick!! Expect them to not contribute any input for the first 30 seconds

2) Only bail if you're blown out hard. If she hasn't left or shoved you away, you're still in there!!

3) Do not, under any circumstances, pull a creepy Libyan into your two set he WILL be a douchebag and steal your set

Things I did well:

- I was alot more natural. Once i hooked, i felt i could get the conversation into my territory and then I'm absolutely fine (that means, cutting conversational threads that dont work for me)

- My energy felt a lot better, i work to really slow my speech down to half of what it probably used to be. Vocal projection is improving, and Body Language too, less slouching than usual and i went kino almost every set.

- ANY set is approachable. I had my photo taken with easily the hottest chick in the bar, within maybe 3 mins of opening her set

- my new goal is to get Minimum of five new phone numbers a week. I like that it's reasonable enough, yet still pushing me forward. Once i start getting consistent fives every week, i'm gonna aim for k-closes and more day twos (haven't been on a day two since that brazillian girl)...

I was out again with Max (who may be leaving the game!) we started in a salsa bar in town, warmed up at the bar and started to do proper approaches then later in the night. It was April fools day, so i was experimenting with an April Fool opener ("hey you have something in your hair.".. then just smile at her till she realised what i was doing - worked well except on the crazy dancing girls)

AMOGGED an Italian guy who was trying to take over a set of Polish girls I was gaming. It was brutal, i blew him out of set by shouting random Itallian phrases at him like "MAMA MIA!! Spaghetti Pizza Meatballs!! Alessandro Nesta Ferarri!!!" until he left, the girls were digging it... Amogging = being louder and more dominant than the other guy and not buying into his frame?

Got one flakey phone number in Leggs on Leeson Street, and ran a great 30 minute game on a German chick who was really pretty but she had short cropped hair (total deal breaker - i can't have longer hair than the chick ) who max said i totally could have closed. Max btw, is super efficient at using Mystery Method. I can actually see him shifting through the various phases, its pretty impressive to see

Things I learned:

- Neg opening isn't as consistent as i thought it would be

- sometimes i still feel like I'm the "enemy" when i go and open a set. Like, its a video game, and I have to win them over, do you ever feel like that? I was getting that a lot this night

- Flakey numbers dont mean shit! There's no point doing ten mins great game, then being like "gimme your number", then going doing ten more sets in front of her... why would she return your calls?! As Mystery would say, she's not invested at all

- AMOGging - Blowing out other guys, being dominant and being in your own world

Was out last night to one of my favourite clubs. Even though I've been doing this a little while, I still felt quite a bit of AA at the beginning of the night, especially outside the club waiting to go inside?! I even did a double take of the club, and came back around ten mins later. That was quite an unexpected feeling!

Anyway, my wing pulled the trigger first, and gamed some Brazillian chick, # closed, while I stood around uselessly like a wallflower... then sucked it up, and spun around, TAP TAP TAP nearest girl I could find, situational opener, "Did you steal my drink?! It was right there two mins ago..." She was laughing so hard at this, and I busted her on it a little bit

A couple more warm up sets and I was hitting a pretty good state. After a while I opened a 2 set of cute Brazillian girls, using a LOT of MM and 60 (MM = getting hooked into the set, DHV'ing, neg hits, talking to the obstacle... 60 = dominant body language, not breaking the sexual tension, going WITH the silences etc)...

This set went very well, until i ran into some guys I knew on the scene, nice guys in fairness to them, but total AFCs, and they were saying the most fucked up things to my set. I literally had to block them out of the set myself, making me look disrespectful to guys that they assumed I was with :O

Number closed the hottest of the two brazillians, ran another couple of sets. I opened a cute dutch girl with hipster glasses with "I like your glasses, are you a nerd? You're a nerd aren't you?" Went very well, more use of MM style body rocking, non verbal FTCs, and fluff talked nicely for a while about music (in fairness this girl had GREAT taste in music)

Just texting my numbers there to go out tonight, waiting for response, but even if i dont get any i'll still head out with some non-game buddies!

I rent my own house in Dublin, but my parents have a big old house down the countryside, and they're going away for a week later this month. I plan to throw a cool party there one or two of the nights.

I've already got a lot of pre-sarged girls who are now firmly in the friend zone who will make it down, but I'm going to work to get a decent number of high quality women to make it over for that party!

Working on getting my approaches down! Last night I was out to one of my favourite clubs, I have had a certain level of success there before. I was out with a wing, made between 10 - 15 approaches but didn't hook any set for longer than maybe 2-3 mins. The tone of the night was really set up from my VERY first approach. Two Irish girls, "Is that a line? BTW you have some toothpaste on your lip" XD

I never really hit state, and was drifting between sets, value scanning a lot, and retrospectively probably not very clear in my intent... The girls were probably thinking "Wow, who's this goofy guy trying to strike up a convo with us?". I was probably focusing more on being natural and getting into a place where the sets would swing open.

I'm going to work more on having more intent, that is, having a target - knowing where I am in the sarge, knowing what I want etc.... I guess just have more structure. I was very aimless last night. Generally I dont like having things prepared to say, especially big long stories, but I think I should have a few things prepared, even just from the week just gone that I can jump into while in set.

Opening and hooking is still big. I'm getting over my AA nicely, opening sets doesn't seem to be the huge impossible task it once was. I just need to start hooking more.

Haven't been out doing cold approach for about a week, due to working on a couple of things at the moment, and scheduling not allowing.

I have however been keeping my social circle game flowing nicely. Recently spent a couple of days with a girl from one of my circle of friends, been working on a certain project together, which required us to hang out for the guts of two days solid. This girl is hb7 but she's gothic with dreads & dyed hair and piercings etc, which instantly bumps her up closer to my personal TEN; having an absolutely incredible personality is simply the cherry on top.

Everything went very well, plenty of iois, giggling, etc, and DHV'ing by introducing her to my circle of friends, and bringing her to alot of cool places she normally wouldn't see. Trying to remain in the moment and pulling her into my reality was difficult though, because I simply have so much outcome dependence on this girl, while I know I really shouldn't. I found myself not kino escalating, and then the dreaded moment when we eventually parted, the big awkward hug... It was pretty awkward, because of my outcome dependence.

Following this, I went out the same night with a different group of friends, one HB8 was DTF if I was interested, but it was as if I simply wasn't interested, because of this other girl... :/

good stuff! keep it up yo!

awesome dude!, I read the whole thing, very insightful! so how many K or F closes you had? Before and after learning to be a PUA?

Cheers guys, appreciate the feedback.

Before PUA: I was in a solid relationship for three years, apart from that only 1 one night stand.

Since PUA: One F-close, 2 K-closes, and around 30 N-closes

Not really able to go out gaming for the next little while due to working etc, possibly a week or two. However I've still got cool things going on, so they'll keep me busy.

I'm going mad over the girl I really hope doesn't become like a mini one-itis. I'm having a tricky time getting her to commit to spending time with me, she initially agrees and appears into it, then will eventually bail. It's driving me crazy because if it weren't for her IOIs in person (and even through fb / text!!) I would just leave it and move on when I can get back out there!!

So now I'm adopting a semi freeze out on her. Non-reactiveness and non-neediness if she bails, tone down the amount of fluff talk via text / FB, but still casually tossing out invitations as they arise.

Hey Havona,

I'm liking your journal a lot... I love the what you're doing in night game, it's inspiring. You're approaching a lot and enjoying it, I can't see how you can fail keeping doing this... I'm following your journey!

Keep up.

Daniel..

_________________
On the Road to Manhood, my new learning journal: http://bit.ly/TEVapM
(My old learning journal http://bit.ly/eYRWL4)

Cheers for the support Dan, glad you enjoy reading it. Hey you're in Brazil a lot of Brazilian girls here

Going out tonight to Max's leaving party, first time REALLY going out since getting dreadlocks put into my hair... I have no idea how it's going to go down they're a little crazy at the moment so i gotta keep wearing a bandana for the time being, but they do look pretty badass. I've semi-invited the girl I was speaking about earlier, she's responded with middling interest. We'll have to wait & see

This is such a cool journal, keep up the good work man, I love reading your entries.