This is not a story/lesson about how sticking around can get you laid. It's just a story about sticking around even when this stuff gets tough just because sticking around is good.

Rolled with /u/kennotheking and another buddy to a meetup in DTLA at one of the better venues. We were in a good mood in the line, horsed around with one of the bouncer type dudes, I did a warmup open of a bachelorette party in the line, didn't amount to anything.

In the main part of the venue, we talked to some of the meetup peeps. I bantered with a chubby two set a bit, and then I did a seated set that wasn't part of the meetup. They were not into it, but I hung in there. They were not particularly attractive, but the interesting thing is that their engagement level was inversely proportional to their attractiveness (the passable 6ish one tried to engage with what I was saying, the middle one was amused, and the homeliest one kept telling me to go away).

Convo with some friendless blond girl who's going to CC in her like early 30s and kept her life story/situation fairly cryptic.

Another two set opened up nicely. Kenno and I engaged and I thought he got some good compliance, but we lost them in a series of minor movements too irrelevant and externally predicated to recount here.

At some point, we scope a couple of cute blonds apparently getting macked on by some weird dude, so we just see if we can break that up and interject--apparently the weird dude was their friend and they were visiting him in LA? When the guy told me that, I kind of looked at the girls to gauge the truth of this claim, but they were quite passive. They went away, perhaps just to totally escape the 3 of us, and the dude started telling us about how one of his songs just got on KISS FM and was celebrating. I congratulated him, and he elaborated that the song was playing on KISS in Mississippi and Alabama, which was just bizarre to me given that he's an effeminate hispanic guy. The genre, he said, was RnB.

We leave the venue shortly thereafter. We had exhausted sets and it just didn't seem to be improving in terms of sets and Ken wasn't down to take a wait and see approach.

This is always a dicey decision, and so it proved, as it turned out the Standard had some private event thing going on on the rooftop and when we tried 71Above, to which none of us had ever been, it was just...not a place to game.

My mood plummeted due to loss of momentum. There was no particular reason, I just kind of felt defeated by the whole thing. Like, everywhere I go, there's dudes way cooler than me and girls have no interest, and like how is approaching supposed to solve that? I can't imagine that even after like a million approaches anything could change. It's easy to convince myself this stuff is a skill by reading on here and consuming RSD materialz, but when I am out, I am quickly reminded that I am a loser and this fact feels as non-negotiable as a law of physics. Plus, there's some other stuff going on in life and it just seems that no matter what I do, nothing ever seems to work out the way I want it to. This is ungrateful thinking--I've lucked out in many many ways. But still, so many times one wants something specific, and puts in a lot of work, and it doesn't seem to materialize...

So that's sort of where my head was at by the time we made it to Clifton's. Clifton's is a very dancy place, so it can be hard sober. But I do approaches, I try to push past the negativity. But it gets to me. I leave the venue. I contemplate Lyfting the f out of DTLA. I talk myself out of it (largely to avoid the monetary cost of doing so, since otherwise I would ride home with Ken for free).

Back inside, I maybe do an approach? I see Ken and our other buddy very briefly.

I leave again, and go to Guisado's to contemplate my next move. I figure I just have negative energy, is there a point trying to shop that around somewhere?

I am eventually motivated to go back by Ken's asking where I am, and by thinking "what would Pierre Trudeau do?" Well, Pierre Trudeau would not get into such a negative head-space in the first place, but if he did feel in any way to be on his backfoot or felt opposition from someone, he wouldn't retreat with his tail behind his legs.

So I went back and did some better approaches. It was worth it; these approaches were good ones. I made sure to be loud and piercing. On one of them, a not particularly good looking semi-chubby girl, I felt I could have went physical. I didn't, but usually the thought doesn't occur to me or, if it does, I'm like "nah, it's not the right time". This time I was like "oh I guess I could" but I just didn't act on it. The result is the same, but the mental aspect was different. Next time maybe I can act on it.

I feel as though I am getting better just very very slowly. I'll stick with it. It's what Pierre Trudeau would do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vykOw37poUI&feature=youtu.be&t=57