So for context, I've been scared shitless of this for a long time, but recently I've gotten so lonely that I no longer care and would much rather be out of my comfort zone than continue to be lonely as hell. I'm not going to call these "cold approaches" because I guess not all of them fit that definition. I'm a straight man and I went into these with zero intentions, talking to both men and women for no other reason than to get comfortable approaching (though if I were to make a new friend/get a date out of it, I obviously wouldn't complain). Basically I decided that for a week I would try to talk to 5 strangers, male or female, romantically interested or not, and just write a little summary of what happened in the notes on my phone. Here's what I had:

  1. I had to catch a plane for work, I was in the waiting area at the gate and this girl who sat across from me seemed really panicked. I asked her if she was okay and she said she was a nervous flyer. I tried talking to her for a minute or two but she didn't seem up for it. Understandable I suppose, I don't really take it personally or anything.
  2. I was on a different plane (after the layover from the first plane) and I struck up a conversation with this girl next to me and I talked with her for like 20 minutes. She seemed nice enough and she didn't seem annoyed by me or anything, but after a while it just like fizzled out. Again, I don't really take that personally, there's a million reasons why she may not have wanted to talk, and people aren't really too chatty on planes to begin with.
  3. I like to go to the beach and play guitar. I was walking along the pier with my guitar in its case on my back and some other guy had his guitar out and was chilling with a girl who I assume was his girlfriend or wife, so I went up and introduced myself, he was a really cool guy, we talked about music and guitars for a little bit then went our seperate ways.
  4. Same beach, different day, saw a guy wearing a hoodie from his Muay Thai gym. I love martial arts and I train Muay Thai, so I asked him if he was into Muay Thai, found out he was a retired professional kickboxer. He showed me a bunch of clips from his fights and we talked about fighting and like the philosophy behind martial arts for a good minute, then went our seperate ways.
  5. Walking back to my car from the beach, saw a guy wearing a NJPW (WWE but in Japan) t-shirt. I love wrestling and have since I was little, so I asked him if he was into wrestling (already I thought that was a dumb question because he's wearing the shirt lmao of course he likes pro wrestling), and it was immediately very clear that he was even more socially inept than I was. Not gonna lie, this one crashed and burned. He seemed happy to talk to me, but it was extremely awkward. After like 2 minutes of talking there was a lull and I just said something like "it was nice meeting you, see you around".

I'm not sure if I accomplished much by doing this. I know it definitely takes more than 5 attempts to see progress, but I thought I would at least feel satisfied, as if I was at least moving the needle a little bit but I don't. It feels like none of these interactions really ever happened. These interactions just came and went so quickly. I probably wouldn't have remembered them if I didn't write them down. That being said, I don't see a reason to stop because it's not like this is hurting me or anything. Maybe it's just the fact that I ended on a low note getting to me (of course I didn't really "end" as I'll hopefully be meeting new people on some kind of regular basis for the rest of my life).

Writing this late at night and I'm kinda tired so if I left out any crucial piece of information, just ask and I'll clarify.