What amazed me most was that there were two trains of thought when I announced my intentions. One, from 99% men was of astonishment and near anger. How could I do something like this? Was something messed up in my inner game? Did I have a brain tumor I was wearing a hat to hide? The other 99% females was it’s about time! You must have figured out woman really want romance, blah, blah, blah… Yeah I’m listening to that CRAP!

First off I didn’t say I was going to roll up my cock and put it away somewhere in cold storage. I didn’t say I was going to stop fucking every chick that met my fancy, and sure as hell I aint stopping loving that wonderful Pink and Squishy, warm and wet, soft and enveloping area of a woman us men call a pussy:). I’m not sure what idiot dreamed all this up, but fuck, get your head out your ass. OK enough of the cursing for this blog. One of my goals is to stop cursing so much and start lying more.

Anyway I figured it would be understood why I was leaving PUA behind and start thinking more forward, but I was wrong. You see, to me Pick-Up is very limited in its thinking. I mean I know a bunch of Pick Up Artists that are considered masters in their fields. There are guys who I always seem to really connect with and have an understanding of them more than I do of others. I mean I like Mystery and guys like him, but I can’t say that he would be my friend if we lived close. I wouldn’t say guys like that wouldn’t either but I’m more inclined to natural guys who don’t use gimmicks and tricks to get what they want, but more like people like Alex Alman and Jae Ellis. Some of the nicest guys I have met in pick-up and normal too.

I see guys who attempt to be someone else when they do pick-up, someone fake, just to get laid and sorry my friends, getting laid is all its about. There are times for sex, and yeah I will admit, it most of the time, but to get interesting, you need to be interested. Let me repeat that, to get interesting, you need to be interested. The passionate confident male is always interested in interesting things. Its about taking in what life has to offer and appreciating it. I felt limited with this respect doing pick-up!

It started out as a life lesson when I read DYD from David D and then Mystery. I made that connection that so many of us do. Lets face it, many guys just don’t get it at all! The thing was though as my game got better and better on the outside, I noticed that more and more things on the inside started creeping and crawling until my inner game was filled with creepy crawlers eating at my brain. It almost seems like an oxymoron, but gaming women was corrupting my personal confidence. I believe I was starting to become more and more ingrained into being a pick-up artist rather than living and experiencing life to its fullest.

I have seen so many guys in this niche start to loose their identities in the hopes of becoming a ladies man, but I challenge this notion. Isn’t one of the reasons you got into pick-up was because you were deserving a relationship. Now it just seems like everything you are doing is about gaming, while your personal identity slips away. I have seen many a man, good people, completely change and become someone else. I am not anybody else, I am just JunkyFungus, but a whole lot smarter than I was a couple of years ago. Of course I plan to fuck my way through Memphis, but at the same time I plan to also seek out life.

I guess he is right though, as since I have started reading it again it has opened my eyes to everything I haven’t been doing or have just forgot. I also have noticed the more time that had elapsed between readings the less and less I was actually pushing myself to open sets. I was taking the easy way out and after so much effort that was not going to be acceptable.

This past weekend was just incredible. It started on Wednesday and ended early this Monday morning. Yeah I’m tired and my throat is sore from all the yelling, I’m hung over and not feeling very motivated today but there is something else going on too. Normally a day that I am beat and feeling it I would have dreaded going anywhere. Maybe through on some shorts and a T-shirt and a hat and off to StarBucks not really caring about appearances, or even worse just staying home.

Not this time! Oddly enough I was yearning to get out, even though I am super tired and not feeling very social I still busted out the ironing board, pressing even my shorts. Avatar is who I am and I am ALPHA and as an ALPHA I am confident and am always aware of whats around me.

So how does this all tie into reading the VAH book again? It’s really simple. I’ve been relearning the skills that brought me so much success and with those skills come responsibility. Not so much to anyone else, but more to myself. First impressions start with myself and as such they start internally. This internalization has caused a spark inside me to ignite the inner fire of challenge. You see I believe that theory is only power if we can transpose it to application and application can only take us as far as we are willing to push the envelope.

Last night I closed an HB9 and I’ll say that she was easily that because she had drive that makes me want to be around her. Sure she is a Beer Goddess at the Beale Street Flying Saucer and yeah the more she flirts and talks the more tip she gets. The difference is just how far I was willing to challenge her to be a challenge to me. I set myself up, not as a customer, but as a fun guy who made her laugh and cry and feel frustrations, heat, sadness, love and many other emotions each time she came around. She didn’t know what to expect of me every time she came by.

I watched her interact with many other tables last night and every guy was just falling over themselves to appease the babe. They made it a point to thank her and tip her and ask her “normal” questions. SteveO challenged her to serve him better than any of the other waitresses there. Be something different than the typical customer, make an impression. The only way you get better at something is when you push things to the extreme even at the risk of failing. After all is it failing if we learn and can then push further next time?

I watched as every guy watched mine and her interaction and for the first time in my life I heard a guy call me an asshole to his buddy. He said I wouldn’t get anywhere with her, or something to that matter. Funny thing was that guy was me many years ago. The nice guy, the follower, abiding by the rules, but always alone.

Our table was the wildest and the drinks and conversation were flowing. Pictures were flashing, our loudness was the loudest and all my lair friends were working the room. At the end of the night everyone knew us and some dude hater snickered to his friend on what an asshole I was. When I came back from the bathroom Jennifer had taken my unsigned charge slip and gave it to a friend. I called her a punk ass and stared her down until she smiled. I smiled and caught dude hater looking in awe as I said I like your style kid. Write down your info for me. I watched as every guy in the room stood in awe as Jennifer, the hottest one in their without question, took a beer coaster and wrote the info down. With a big smile she hands it off and I grab the pen from her and say I’m keeping this as ransom. She smiles and tells me she is going to get her pen back and that she guarantees it. I say deal and walk off. When I passed the table of dude hater I say loud for him to hear it,”Yep I’m an asshole.”

When we are weakened by the simple truth then the adage that the truth never hurts must in turn be a lie, or at least in this instance. When I first thought of my epiphany the other day it made me furious. I argued the thought to myself and repeated over and over in my head looking for a way out. Hoping among hopes I was wrong and this time I really wanted to be wrong. If you know me you know I like to play devils advocate and argue every conceivable avenue even when I know it is utterly useless to do so and it goes against everything I stand for. Not today, not then, not ever have I been able to come up with such an idea that my very existence as a human has been challenged. Everything I stand for and believe in is topsy-turvy now and yet somehow I believe I am a better man for it.

We all experience rejection and as an aspiring Pick Up Artist we come to value it as a learning curve, or as we call it in the industry “calibration.” We need to calibrate our actions, words, whatever so that we may overcome the obstacle that is put forth and push the interaction forward. It’s a part of every aspect of life.

What if we were using excuses like she didn’t like me because I’m short, fat, balding, smelly as ways to compensate for the real issue that she didn’t like us because we are unlikable to her. These real issues could be race, religious, personality, things we hold as core parts of our identity. Therefore the issue is made up to cover our own insecurities with our own ego. We can overcome being fat by blaming it on the weight and therefore having an internal mechanism that compensate the inadequacy’s and learning to cope with that aspect.

In turn we might even create an issue like weight every time someone wants to just be friends because it would be easier to undertake to emotional damage and isolate those feelings and learn to repress those emotions over time, after time, after time rather than deal with something larger than say an actual character defect. So wouldn’t it be easier to say I’m fat and I can get over that because I know I’m a great guy and she should like me for who I am, putting forth the blame back onto her. While at the same time using that weight defect as a compensating flaw that with time can be emotionally blocked from ireperable damage all the while taking the actual defect, a flaw in ones personality or character, that which is emotionally more damaging to our ego. Therefore we chose the easier and less damaging path.