Gutter Game

ive been trying to get back into approaching, on and off, for what seems like months.

i’ve certainly been doing it actively for the past week, every day.

i told myself, i’m not getting any closer.

the one thing i know has always helped me in the past has been having a wing.

but i don’t have a wing now. and i don’t want to depend on having a wing.

i asked myself today, can i imagine having a wing?

i tried to do it. literally, i imagined a clone of myself walking next to me. i imagined talking to him, knowing he’s there etc.

it actually helped a bit, but it was too hard to keep up.

then i had a thought.

why don’t i just put my headphones in, hit record on the voice memo app, and talk to myself like i’m talking to somebody i know and like?

people on the street don’t know the difference. maybe i won’t know the difference either.

i started to do it. immediate benefits:

1. i started talking, to actually practice talking rather than having an unpracticed voice from a whole day of being by myself

2. my voice got deeper and louder

3. i got more expressive and more in the moment

4. i started gesticulating

5. i started calling out things i was saying

6. i even got into a better mood at some point.

i don’t know the neurology of it. but i have reason to believe that the simple act of verbalizing my thoughts, rather than having them be unexpressed, or even suppressed, has benefits.

oh, there’s also external benefits:

1. since i’m being loud and expressive, it’s more likely girls notice me

2. since i appear to be on the phone and am therefore “engaged,” they are more likely to give me IOIs

sure enough, this happened. a girl gave me a glance.

and sure enough, my talking to myself, continuously, for 20 minutes, put me in a different frame of mind than i had been all these past days, all these weeks and months of not approaching.

i finally approached. it wasn’t a good set, but i approached.

i will be talking to myself on the street, like a daygaming lunatic, from now on.

I wnet out today. With a view to doing an approach. Perhaps a more serious and committed view than I’ve had the past few days.

I still didn’t approach.

I looked over notes I had taken last year about overcoming approach resistance. The first practical bit of advice was:

“1. get one approach and just do the attention snap well”

This is something I remember repeating to myself over and over. Because the alternative is to think about the overwhelming task ahead — all the girls I will have to approach to find one who will like me, and all the talking and emoting I will have to do in order to get her there.

Of course, maybe that’s not a good way to look at daygame. But it’s the reality of my own thoughts.

And so it has helped me in the past to repeatedly tell myself, as I walk around, that my goal is simply to approach one girl, and to do the attention snap well, meaning that I get in front of her in a commanding way and make her stop. And that’s it. Everything else is a bonus.

So let me do that tomorrow.

I was at home today before going out to approach (or not), and I didn’t feel good. As if to say, “It’s not happening today. I shouldn’t go out.”

I have to remind myself of this a million times over, and I still forget:

What I imagine will happen, and how I feel about what I imagine, have little or nothing to do with the reality of what will happen.

I went out. I didn’t approach. But reminding myself of this is important, because it’s the first step in actually taking a step towards that experience, rather than staying when I am due to expectation.

And maybe, in time, the simple repetition of this mantra — “Expectation is not experience” — might help me overcome the resistance I’m feeling right now.

I haven’t done any approaches in 6+ months.

I have gone back and forth with whether I’m done with daygame or not.

I tried to tell myself it’s over. I felt horrible as a result. So I told myself to go back to it, even if it’s just daydreaming that I will do it.

I’ve spent the past few months, weeks, and days, walking around, and not doing any approaches. Not even close.

I once wrote that the first step to building up a habit that you want to build up, in spite of a lot of resistance, is to prioritize it.

So that’s what I’m doing now, by writing here. No, that’s not true. By writing here, I am simply tricking myself to think that activity is action.

Tomorrow, I will prioritize doing an approach. Go out at a time of day, 10am, when I have more mental energy than I might have later in the day. And do an approach. Preferably quickly. Preferably well. But one way or the other, just to get the ball moving.