[King of Monkeys]

@Travesty @Reino341

I appreciate the feedback, and I do see what you mean by consistency being one of the most important parts of approaching. Similarly, I find if I skip days lifting weights, I'll end up losing some progress when I make up those days the following week. It also makes it harder to get back into it when I miss days I'm supposed to lift. In order to fully get myself into the mindset of approaching, I have to make into a habit that feels completely natural to me, and being consistent with it will do just that.


[D]: It was a warm sunny day outside, so I decided to go outside and sit on a bench in my college's courtyard. I notice a cute girl studying and a few other decent-looking girls hanging around working too. At the time, I had a physics exam approaching and the courtyard is near my class, so I had a few of my classmates sit next to me and talk to me before they went into the building. I can tell time is dwindling since the test begins in less than five minutes. I talk to my current classmate hanging around what to do if you know you're supposed to do something, but keep avoiding it and he said to just do it. I get up and walk over to the cutest girl in the courtyard and tell her I thought she was cute and wanted to come over and say hi. She seems taken aback at first, but then she smiles and says she's studying for a test in a couple hours. My body immediately felt the need to retreat and seek cover behind a nearby table. I was expecting a rejection, most likely that she had a boyfriend or was seeing someone, and the last thing I had anticipated was her being so open to my approach. She offered her hand and introduced herself, and I gave her mine back in return. I had to get back to my exam since it would be starting in less than a minute, so I excused myself and headed inside. I realized later on I could have gotten her phone number and seen how willing she was to give it out, but her positive reaction caught me off guard.

[D]: I've got time after my recent class, so I start walking around the hallway. I see a girl sitting by herself, but she's in a fairly secluded area, so I initially pass up on it thinking she must be hard at work on an assignment and would not want to be bothered. I go through the hallways and don't see anyone else, so I figure I might as well give it a shot and see where it goes with the girl I passed by. I sit down one seat over and pull out a physics book and my notebook to have an excuse for sitting down. I say hello and start talking, only to realize she has earbuds in and didn't catch a word of it. I feel embarrassed, but she takes off her earbuds and asks if I said something. I recover by repeating some of what I spoke about before, and I ramble a bit about the end of the semester coming up and summer plans. We get an all right conversation going between us, but anxiety keeps growing in me as the interaction progresses. I have a harder time keeping eye contact, and I feel overly afraid about what to say next. I use my getaway excuse by saying I don't want to keep her from her assignment for too long, I brush up on my physics for a few minutes, then I grab my stuff and walk away.

[D]: I see a girl sitting by herself with a few papers strewn out in front of her. I ask her for the time, she says it, and then I say I actually thought she was cute and just wanted to say hi. My voice ended up getting softer and quieter as I said it, so it ended up lacking in punch. She said she had a boyfriend, so I said goodbye and left. I didn't think there was anything I could do to recover after she said that.

[D]: A beautiful blonde girl is sitting at a table by herself in the student commons. I walk over and set down my backpack, and open by saying how there's so many people on my campus who act coldly and don't seem to want to talk to anyone. She gives a laugh, albeit a fake-sounding one, and then talks about how she isn't like that. Although the conversation isn't off to an interesting start, I think it could pick up the more we go on. Unfortunately, one of the faculty at the college comes by and sits down and they start talking. Apparently, she was applying for an internship to an outside company, so I think she was sitting there waiting for him to show up. I was gradually pinched out of the conversation, so I left when I could tell there wasn't anything else I could do.

[D]: I catch a black-haired, pale-skinned girl by herself texting on her phone. She's cute so I sit down across from her and make a comment about people who spend time socializing on their phones too much can't hold conversations any more. I was originally planning to put her on her toes, but she shot back and asked me why I thought that. As I started my explanation, she took out a burrito right in front of me and started eating. Much to my fascination and disgust, she not only kept talking but she able to finish the burrito in less than a couple minutes. It was an impressive display of mexican food-inspired gluttony. A couple minutes later, a friend of hers shows up and it looks like she was waiting for him there. Freezing up, I'm not sure what to say as her attention is diverted towards him while he talks to a few other people at the table next to ours. I catch him talking about anime, so when he's done talking and sits down at our table I immediately change the discussion to anime so we've got common ground to work with. I'm able to chat him up for a bit, she talks to him, and then when I pull him back into our conversation I get her trying harder to be included in it. They leave five or so minutes later, and she turns around and says it was nice talking to me. The approach did not go the way I had expected it to, but I think I handled it well.



I have one week left in my semester. I'm going to be taking a programming class in the Summer to finally get my Associates degree, and I've also got a drawing and a singing class I'm taking for myself. I'm ramping up my approaches for the Summer, and my main goal is to amp up my conversational skills and reduce my approach anxiety even more.