That’s right, everything. That doesn’t mean that it has to be attraction-based or lead to sex. See every situation as a chance to improve your skills – whatever they may be. I have a family dinner on Easter Sunday. It’s going to be damn awkward. Don’t get me wrong, they’re awesome people and all that. I have a fairly functional family with the odd scandal, but nothing really that big or terrible. Just an average, functional family. The only catch is I’m the youngest member of the family at 24, and everyone else is at least 5 years older than me, save for my sister and less than a handful of cousins.

What the fuck do you talk about with family who are either popping out babies, running their own businesses, or working the corporate ladder? It is somewhat stereotypical: the men smoke cigars in the garage, watching sports, and talking about business, politics, and cars. I don’t smoke, I have no interest in sports, and their views on those three things differ from mine. The women tend to talk about similarly stereotyped things, which I fall into the same options: no comment, or disagree. What is a fellow to do?

I find family to be particularly difficult, and I’m sure you can relate. They’ve known you since you were a kid, and have this particularly skillful way of making you feel just like that kid you’re trying to get away from. Reinventing yourself? They don’t know anything about that and know who you were. It’s easy to change yourself when you’re around people who don’t know you very well, isn’t it?

But that’s not going to happen this year – I have a game plan this time. How do you stop being yourself when people expect you to act as you always have? You pretend to be someone else. I’m going to be Steve. A good friend of mine has this child-like wonder and enthusiasm about him that’s warm and endearing. He can talk to anyone and people just seem to like him because of it. I’m also going to study my extended family tree so that I know the names of all the random kids that have popped up in recent years, and the names of people I only see once or twice a year, if that.

Wish me luck, hopefully this strategy works, and hopefully you fare just as well.

Happy Easter.

As I said in my last post, it’s been a while since I’ve gone out clubbing. I went out on St.Patrick’s day, though, and that was awesome. It made me realize something, though: Going out sober is a much more effective way to get better. It’s significantly harder, but it’ll get you better much faster and allow you to think clearly. It’ll make this a skill that extends to the rest life instead of being a select situation skill set. A lot of guys use alcohol to grease the wheels a bit, and who hasn’t done that? It isn’t called “liquid courage” for nothing. But from my friends who do go out regularly, it appears to be more of a skill set only for when they’re in that setting: they’re at the bar, drunk, hitting on girls. For me, it became a skill set that I could do any time, if I found the drive.

It doesn’t start that way, though. No, it starts as a skill set that you use in the bar. You put on your “pick up” persona, and you get your groove on. That sort of thing helps in the beginning, but then you start to notice that you’re quicker in everyday conversations – wittier, even. I started to realize that it was something I could take on all the time, I just had to will myself to do it.

If you’re looking for a quick fix, you know what I’m going to say. It’s always the same with quick fixes: someone’s trying to take your money, or they’re giving you a bandaid. If you want something easy, go jerk off to porn. That’s as easy as it gets. Doing nothing is easy, so do it if you want, but it’ll get you nowhere. So you need to consider whether you want to one day be that guy that other guys want to be, or if you want to continue jerking yourself to sleep on a Friday night.

Listen, guys. I’m not a strong extrovert. I’m barely on that side of the fence, so it is an effort for me to get going. But like most things, once you get going, you keep going. An object in motion stays in motion, right? Get yourself out there and into a different emotional state, and run with it. Personally, I find watching some episodes of “keys to the VIP” helps get me in a mind frame to go out.

To close, read the picture posted with this text and reconsider what you’re doing with yourself.

As anyone who pays attention to time stamps can tell from a glance at this blog, I have not been consistent in my posting. Not only that, but I have broken my promise of going out three times a week. Yes, it appears that I have treated you, the reader, quite miserably. But wait! Before we go about boiling the tar and collecting the feathers, let me explain!

In line with my view that people should live life to their fullest and get out there, I have become quite involved in a number of things since the year started. As I’m sure you’re aware, objects in motion stay in motion. Similarly, objects that aren’t moving don’t tend to start moving, right? Yeah… in getting busy and involved with other things, the blog had obviously come to a halt and stayed that way. This is me restarting it.

Of course, I wasn’t busy solid through January to now, at least not with one thing in particular. January, I started a job that took up ridiculous amounts of time. Most full-time jobs take up a fair amount of time, but traveling an hour to and from work can really cut into it. One thing I found, though, was that having such little time actually made me ridiculously productive. Get home, work out, apply to jobs, message some girls online, draw, then relax for maybe an hour before going to bed, repeat.

Most of December I was working only a couple days a week, and mostly lounging around in a winter blues sort of way playing Skyrim. This may sound like a fun way to spend your time, but honestly I wouldn’t recommend it. A great man once said that an eternal vacation would be a good definition of hell and I have come to agree. It’s the same as making Christmas everyday: it becomes meaningless, the norm.

Since that lethargic episode, and extreme work episode, I’ve started working on my own side projects. I’ve started working towards a goal that can be my own and something I’ve always wanted to be: self-employed. It may be a far way off, but it’s something that keeps me going. That is the message of this post. Find out what you want, but have been too afraid or not daring enough to strive for. Think big, don’t limit yourself. From there, start the ball rolling and keep it rolling by taking the steps you need to get where you want.

Relating this back to attraction: since becoming busier with my work and private projects, I’ve found that my time is scarcer. Yet, I’ve been getting more attention from women than ever before and my success has skyrocketed. I’m not sure whether it’s because I’ve got other things on the go, or because I’ve really gotten my stride. Whatever it is, focusing on your own endeavors will help you by giving you direction, drive, and making you a scarce commodity – all three of which making you that much more attractive.

Thanks for checking up on me, I hope to be here for a while to come.

-Prometheus

Hey there, how are you doing? Great, me too! Now that the formalities are out of the way, let’s get down to brass tacks: When is the next time you’re going to get out there and hone those skills of yours? I don’t care if it’s social skill related, music, mathematics, or astronomy; when are you going to get back to work on your passion?

I had a rather revealing conversation with my colder cousin (11 years my senior) the other day about how difficult it was to get things going and how finding motivation to do anything was difficult. He broke it to me that basically “That’s what life is. It’s the struggle to get what you want to get done around what you need to get done. Hopefully you can one day combine the two into one” and he’s right. I work odd hours at 3 different jobs and I’m barely making ends meet, yet I still find time to work at what I want to eventually make into my profession. Granted, some days are better than others, but you’ll get there if you keep going forward.

There is a key to getting ahead with it, however, and take that with a grain of salt considering I’m a 24 year old male who’s also working hard to push forward. The key as far as I’ve come across in the research is simply to keep trying. Failure, as they say, is when you’ve stopped attempting. It’s when you accepted defeat and moved on. THAT is the true death of the soul.

No, what I’ve found in the research seems congruent with everything I’ve read about from biographies to quotes on how rich and famous people became just that. They say that they just kept trying. They never gave up and didn’t let it rest.

“Wow,” you might be thinking, “how the hell do you get to that level of endurance where you can work your day job and still go home, energyless, and push through?” And the answer is that it comes with time. Will power is a muscle; you exert it one day and for a short period it is temporarily weakened, but it ultimately becomes stronger and stronger the more you use it. Once you accept that, it actually becomes pretty easy to keep going forward, doesn’t it? It’s not that you have to be perfect now; you just have to keep going with your imperfection, striving for perfection. It seems that the only difference between being the best and being mediocre is persevering and just putting the time in. That’s obviously downplaying how difficult it can be to find that motivation and/or time, but that is what it boils down to.

After considering everything I’ve just said, what’s stopping you? What’s your next step? Where do you see yourself going in the near future? How about the long term? If the short- and the long-term are not in alignment, then you have some soul searching to do, my friend.

To put it in context of social skills: You’ll never regret the approach, and you‘ll never regret the night out. What you’ll regret is not knowing if you could have gotten her number, or if you would have had fun and rocked the shit out of that club.

Happy trails!

I think now would probably be a good time to discuss what exactly it is I aim to achieve. For me, developing social skills and skills with women specifically is probably a never-ending struggle to be the best person I can be. My goal is to be able to read social situations and people well enough that I can see ways to help people’s immediate situation, and their life overall. As time has gone on, I feel almost like I’m developing a super power of sorts. Most people feel uncomfortable or awkward when speaking to strangers. They appear to feel as though they’re locked into their current group of friends, even if they have nothing really in common other than history. They continue to hang out because they simply don’t have anyone else.

It’s a sort of prison of the mind, seeing yourself as limited to the options that fate infrequently decides to throw your way. I have friends who have wanted a girlfriend, but weren’t willing to go out and do anything about it. From their perspective, they’d rather it just unfold and for things to just happen. That’s cool if it works out for you, but for some that means it will never happen.

What I promote is getting out there and talking to people. Watch the movie “Yes Man,” take notes. I used to turn down invitations from people I wasn’t really close with simply because I wasn’t sure whether I would fit in, or that I would be comfortable. But let’s face it, comfort is overrated, at least most of the time.

I have a theory that we only grow at our max potential when we’re uncomfortable. I’m not talking about doing dangerous things; I’m talking about those situations where you aren’t fully confident, where you’re putting yourself out there, where you’re trying something new. Learning is logarithmic; a very steep growth rate that tapers off and quickly starts to plateau. It takes much more effort for much less return. To master something or even become proficient takes a lot of time, but going from no skill at all to intermediate is quick.

My point isn’t that you shouldn’t persevere with things – far from it. I’m only conveying the importance of doing things that you know will benefit you, but that you are uncomfortable doing. That is the goal with this for me: to become comfortable being in the uncomfortable. To be able to put myself out there and take whatever is dished out. That’s what I want for me. What I want for other people is to be able to make them comfortable, to help them grow, and to help them achieve their own form of happiness.

What about you? What do you hope to achieve and how are you working towards them?

Here is probably the first of many tales from last night. Of course, it will be a different night each time, but this particular one took place two nights ago, Monday the 3^rd. There’s probably a moral somewhere in here, but I’m not entirely sure where or what, so feel free to leave a comment on what you think it might be.

Our night starts by me shooting out a text to a bunch of people who are my regular clubbing friends, to some solid people, and to a few people who I’ve never gone out with, but have habitually extended an invitation to me. The people I ended up going out with were my roommate, Raph, and two girls who fall into the last of those categories and will be known as Jen and Erin.

I’ve only known them both a short while, Erin having only known me for a few months and only seeing me in person twice before last night. Raph and I show up at their place, hang out a little bit while they predrink and end up going to the bar a little after 11. A real cheap, dirty dive bar in Waterloo that is fairly well known to the area and frequented by university students. It’s more my crowd, people are generally more approachable there, and intellectual conversations are a bonus.

The night begins by Jen bailing after being there for maybe 20 minutes. That leaves us to have to watch over Erin, who is well on her way to being drunk at this point. That’s all well and good if it wasn’t for the fact that she appears like she’s quite taken with me and determined to gain my attention in whatever way she can find.

It starts while we’re dancing when she attempts to mark her territory by placing her scarf around my neck. I don’t really react, and keep dancing, sometimes incorporating it into some moves. I eventually pawn it off on Raph when we step outside for him to have a smoke.

I didn’t tell Erin we were going outside because she appeared to be having a fine time dancing and no one was bothering her. When we come back in, she takes me aside and pulls me close to tell me how terrified she was that we left her alone. I’m not really buying it, but I tell her I’ll let her know next time. During our dancing, my ex-girlfriend and her friend are on the dance floor with us and I casually go between groups dancing and being social with the people I know. We’re on good terms, me and my ex, so it’s not really a big deal. About 10 minutes after Erin told me how terrifying being alone in this bar was, Raph and I decide to get a drink, assuming she wouldn’t want to be left alone again in such a terrifying place. We start making our way to the back of the bar.

I turn around to see if she’s following and she’s not. What the hell happened to being afraid of being left alone? I scan the dance floor from where I am and see that she’s talking to my ex. ‘Fuck this,’ I think as I push my way through the crowd. I don’t know what she’s doing, but I’m pretty sure I’m not going to like it. She never does follow us, but we intended to continue dancing. Almost as soon as she sees me, she grabs a nearby chick and starts aggressively making out with her. Cool. Whatever.

I find out that Erin told my ex that she was interested in me and tried shoving my ex onto some random guy nearby. To me, it seemed like an attempt to quell any form of distraction I might have. I keep dancing and continue to ignore her like I’ve been doing the whole night because I never really had any interest, and thought she was just a friend. There had been subtle signs in the past that she might’ve been interested, but I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt.

I talk to some girls, and they’re showing pretty good interest, but I don’t do much about it because I figure there’s a double fault of risking offending my ex and having this other chick explode at them or something. Sure – always be closing, make a move no matter what, fuck what they think, etc. – but sometimes it’s probably not the best idea to do so. I may have downplayed how much she could affect my life, but I’d rather leave some level of anonymity.

She ended up inadvertently trying to DHV with us by showing us some texts guys have sent her about how much they want her, and her putting them down. Essentially: these guys want me, but I’m not interested in them. I’m high value, and I’m still available.

At one point, she comes over and starts feeling me up with her make out buddy in tow, introducing us. I still don’t know what that was about, but the make-out girl ends up getting annoyed and leaves in confusion at what the hell’s I happening. You and me both, sister. It’s at this point that I make clear in no uncertain terms that I am not interested in her, though I might be mistaken about her intention. She gets mad at me and tells me she never had any interest in me, then proceeds to feel me up the rest of the night while asking “is this ok for a friend to do this? Just as a friend” that I brush off and say yeah, whatever. I frequent this place so maybe it’ll give me some social proof for the future, but who knows. Why am I putting up with this behaviour? I feel responsible for her because she’s a mess and I drove her there, and it’s implied that I’ll be driving her back. The night ends without many more mishaps and I drop her off at her place, driving off into the night wondering what the hell that was all about. Fade to black.

One thing I realized from this is that the more people you know, the more you’ll find two groups of relatively rare people: The truly solid, awesome people you want to fill your life with… and the truly insane and unstable who you would generally like to avoid. I suppose it just takes some time honing your skills to identify who is who.

So, what’s the moral? Like I said, I’m not sure. It could be that you should be careful when choosing who to go out with… or maybe meet up at the bar so that you’re not responsible for them getting home? Or maybe it could be as simple as just learning to avoid this particular girl. Let me know what you think.

So you’ve decided to go down this path of self-actualization, or maybe you see it more as a minor detour to becoming more social. Both are awesome, and I thoroughly applaud you for taking up the mantle. I can see some of you being quite skeptical about whether this is something worth putting your time or energy into. The question remains: Why should you bother becoming more social than you already are?

When I first started getting out there and doing my thing, I would actively work to make sure everyone liked me. If I got a negative response with someone, I’d try to fix it and turn it around. Largely, it was something I did just to see if I was able to do it, but it eventually became a gnawing need. This can work in certain contexts – the office, family gatherings – but sometimes you need to just put your foot down, grow a spine, and tell someone to fuck off.

This leads me to where I’ve progressed to. I was talking with a buddy of mine about how stuffy some people can be at a party, and it led me to realize how my behaviour has changed: I don’t give a shit about what strangers think of me. Or, rather, I don’t care nearly as much as I did.

I was at a Halloween party a little while ago and there was a fairly attractive girl that was chatting up my friend, so I went in to see how it was going and to grab something from nearby. In reaching past her, I touched her shoulder. My god! How dare I! She pushed my hand off and told me she hates when people touch her shoulders. Old me might have stuck around and asked why she didn’t like that. I would have worked on creating rapport. This time? Nope. Barely reacted and moved on to speaking with someone more interesting.

The more you get out there and the more social you get, the less you tend to put up with stuffy, bad behaviour from others and yourself. Don’t get me wrong, people go through rough patches and this can cause them to be downers or dicks. Obviously, keep some perspective on what’s going on with them and take that into account.

What’s the take-away to this? The more people you speak to, the more you’ll see that they’re just people and are typically too focused on their own shit to bother judging you too much, the ones that are judging are typically assholes with serious problems of their own, and, finally, there are tons of awesome people out there. The more people you meet, the clearer image you get of what kind of people you want in your life.