I’m 27 years old and live in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. It’s about half a mile north of Wrigley Field so I live in an area with tons of people my age. I probably walk by at least 300 strangers a day, and live within literally hundreds of bars within a few miles, so opportunity is not a problem.

I first heard about pickup years ago when Mystery’s show was on VH1. I’ve read stuff on pickup off and on for years, but I’ve never been willing to attempt anything in practice. I haven’t even been willing to make this introductory post even though I made this profile a while ago. I wouldn’t mind learning club or bar game (hell, I’m a bartender), but I like the idea of natural day-gaming. Maybe it’s because night game seems more intimidating, but day-game seems like it would be more my style… well, if I had a pickup style.

I’ve let my depression define how I see the world as long as I remember. I've used negative outlets such as food (I ate myself into obesity, recently lost 80 pounds, but have kept a small keg for a stomach for about the last year), alcohol (would drink until I passed about 5 years straight until a few years ago), drugs (not hard drugs, but before I’ve smoked weed all day, every day to avoid feeling stress), or just sitting by myself in my room and locking myself away from the world.

I would like to say that I enjoy doing things such as martial arts, working out, playing guitar, and dancing, but I haven’t been able to motivate myself to do any of those in a long time. I don’t do things I want to do because of excuses I create myself. Sometimes it’s “I wouldn’t be good at it anyways,” “I’m just going to fail so why bother”” or maybe “people probably don’t want me there anyways.” I give up easily, convinced of one or more of my failings.

But I also know all those negative views of me are complete and utter bullshit. I am a smart guy. When I try new things, I often get asked how long I’ve done it, from learning to ride a motorcycle or my first shift bartending. When I put my mind to something, I exceed other people’s (and sometimes even my own) expectations. I tend to get promoted at jobs quickly, I’m great at interviews, and people seem to think I’m funny.

After a one-year layoff, I will return to law school in January. I didn’t do well my first semester there so decided to take some time off and mentally regroup after a particular nasty episode of depression where I was starting to scare myself. I withdrew in March, and took a heavy ego blow, but I’m ready to make the best of it.
I’ve put a ton of work into my life, but since June I’ve noticed I’ve lost the drive to improve myself dwindle. I refuse to let myself fall into my old traps that got me the bad results from before. This is the happiest and most confident I’ve ever been.
I want to live my life the way I want to live it, and not based on any other person’s idea of who I should be. Fear of failing kept me in that mindset my entire life. I have the rest of my life to work becoming who I think I should be. It won’t be easy. I will crash and burn more in the next six months than I have combined in my life. But sooner or later I won’t be crashing; I’ll be soaring.

I haven’t had much confidence or success when it comes to women, but I think that my old way of self-loathing beliefs stopped me, not the real me. I hear stories all the time that girls liked me but I never saw, or let myself believe, that they did.
My goal isn’t to go from my current baker’s dozen to some high triple-digit number, but to become the confident person I know I can be. I have two immediate goals. One: Get over my fear of failure. Two: Accept that the only person’s opinion of me that matters is mine.

I look forward to hearing from the community, and eventually giving back to it.

Shields