So learning pick up is like going to the gym... But what happens when your gym is of low-quality? I want to complete Neill Strauss's 30-day challenge but I live in a small town where pretty much nobody is a stranger. I'm a student so I'm also too poor to travel to the nearest city to practice. There are some strangers I guess but if I approach them, others who I know personally will see me doing this and I'm very anxious about that. I will find it hard to even complete the first challenge (talk to 5 strangers) due to these facts. I guess it would help if my conversational skills were better... My brain isn't exactly fully functioning. My hippocampus(memory) is probably shrunken to the size of a pea due to depression/anxiety and this affects my social skills enormously.