It's about damn time I do another one of these field reports. It feels like a while that I haven't done one.

Backstory of shitty week (this can be skipped) The shitty week (which started with such promise) started with me texting my target about making lunch plans (as I didn't see her in two weeks and was on the cusp of asking her out when she disappeared from my life, I got her number to avoid this very situation) and she agreed but decided to make it a group lunch thing (I kept the text very short and very singular focused, not sure why she wanted a group thing but sure went with it). Prior to this text, we didn't exactly build a text convo, other than a general question about guitars which I used as a pretext to ping. Anyways, she had said she was thinking about Japanese, to which I sent a reply asking her if she knew a place, no reply. All of this happened on Sunday. Getting agitated, I decided to send her another text on Wednesday suggesting that Friday would be an excellent day to do lunch and once again asked if she knew a decent Japanese restaurant, again no reply... Which just infuriated me. Yes, I know I got flaked, I'm okay with that. It's the conduct that pisses me off; an excuse or something would be decent! Giving no replies sends me a clear message of disrespect! Now while I'm sure there maybe be a good reason, the odds are there wasn't a legitimate reason at all. In the end I take it as, "don't talk to me". And I won't! Promptly changed her contact info to Flakey Mcflakerson (yes a sedditor did it, so I copied him lol) and now moved on with my life. I even hate typing this part out... but I am proud of myself of maning up, finding my balls and asking her about lunch instead of pinging!

Main part After this, my friend who was privy to my situation invited me out to a bar with his friends. Some of them I met previously, and others were new. Well, since my awesome improvement over the last couple of months (and even this week, when I was able to talk about sex with my 40 year old female boss, which I wouldn't have done a week ago), I was a beast. The topic of space exploration came up (not sure how, but something about the last shuttle flight etc...) and I am extremely passionate about it, as I'm actually studying to be a rocket scientist and eventually do want to be an astronaut. I just impressed everyone with my nerdy but amazing talk about science and how we need it. There was a supposed alpha of the group, lets call him Greg, well, Greg has nothing on me now!!!! This got me noticed by a girl (HB7). While I did notice this, I did nothing about it! And this is what I regret the most... I should've talked to her privately, I should have built more rapport. I should've been more assertive. (Not sure if I may have interpreted her body language right, but like seddit says: assume attraction). But then again, a week ago I would not even have noticed her interest as I knew nothing about IOIs or anything else. So, in short I'm taking it in steps. Now that I know these things (IOIs, etc), I can better position myself to pick out girls who are into me and then talk to them and move on with life.

So thanks Seddit! My journey has started, but I am no where complete! But you'll know as I go along.

If you can provide any feedback to either stories go for it. Again, understand that I'm just a novice at this, so don't be too harsh. And atleast I'm trying instead of being an AFC!