Last night before I went to bed, I wrote on an index card: "Operation: Avalanche of Positivity" - compliment 10 people - donate $50 to direct relief international - smile and verbally greet everyone - stop the cynicism - don't bitch - no sarcasm - aim for positive interactions instead of humor - don't talk about other people when they aren't around It was vaguely inspired by this post from r/innergame

Well last night sucked. I had a hard time falling asleep and once I finally did, it started thunderstorming outside and I fall asleep again. Very frustrating.

So this morning I woke up for work groggy and miserable. I immediately donate to the charity and start to feel better about myself for doing it. I get ready for work and take the index card with me. From the moment I get into the parking lot, I make a conscious effort of not only having eye contact and smiling to everyone but to also make some sort of verbal greeting such as "hello" or "good morning" - I managed to do it about half the time. I didn't bother saying it to people who were on the phone or were purposely averting their eyes from me (a lot of this actually, plenty of introverts at an engineering company).

Well after work, me and some coworkers have our weekly bar night. The place we usually go to is heavily populated by dudes, but I'm going to have fun. I am the alpha nerd of this group of coworkers. There is one girl (HB7) and I am teasing her the whole time. My friends decide to give me some unsolicited advice knowing that I am single, basically saying "you have to be nice to her if you want her to like you, you are going about this all wrong etc." and I tell them that I don't really care whether she likes me or not - I'd just rather know if at she at least has a compatible sense of humor with me.

As our bill comes, I wander over to open a 2-set (HB 5.5, 6.5) and chat with them for a bit. Got blown out. It was weird, they seemed interested (at least the 5.5 did), and they introduced themselves to me a couple minutes in. Then when I try to end the discussion and get their numbers to try to invite them to a bbq this weekend, the 5.5 gets weird and says that her grandparents will be in town or something... The discussion goes south and I eject back to my friends. They were all staring at me doing the whole "so... how did it go" bs stick. It was very weird to them that I decided to talk to some random people, and they all seemed very self-satisfied that I didn't succeed. That's a shitty feeling. I recite some Gretzky platitude about how you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, then we pay our bills and make our exit. (I don't know if they were staring at the girls I was talking to and making it obvious I was with them and being creepers. Or if it was the fact that these moderately attractive girls were easily the hottest things in a bar full of dudes. Or the 5.5 didn't want to look easy in front of her friend... I'm still new at this and am trying to pinpoint where I went wrong exactly). I felt too dejected at this point to even really bother getting the 7 in our group's number.

Well that was my day. I know I need to open many, many more sets to get through my AA completely, and also to become more outcome-independent. Hopefully, I have also pushed my mind into more positive realms of thinking with my positivity goals today.