I'd wager that the overwhelming majority of people who frequent Seddit had that "aha" moment during which they realized that, hey - enough is enough, the buck stops here - I'm going to fix this problem.

In my case, I've had the "aha" moment probably three times in the past five years, and each of these respective moments has culminated in reading a ton of material, feeling like I'm really going to go all the way this time and ultimately ending up doing basically nothing until the next wave of frustration hits, which is when the vicious cycle manifests itself anew.

But, I hope, this time is different - this time, I found Seddit which in turned helped me to find Manson's book, a true far cry from the prototypical alpha male / cocky-funny drivel that has permeated this underground universe of pickup artists (which, all along, I thought was kind of bullshit).

I bought it on Kindle yesterday and finished it in about eight hours. During that span of time, I can't even recall the number of times I put my iPad down, looked around and burst into laughter because the book described me to almost shocking detail. This guy must really know his stuff, I figured.

Enter today - I've been on vacation for the last few days and I decided to take a walk down the beach and try out the most basic approach the book discusses - asking women for the time.

Pathetic, I know, but even this was difficult! I had no idea that my approach anxiety was this bad. It took me roughly an hour, and I talked to 10 women, three of whom were with their significant other at the time. I'd also be lying to you if I told you I didn't cherry-pick HARDCORE (checking for cell phones/watches, making sure they were in close proximity so I wouldn't have to awkwardly wander to another part of the beach, etc).

No one bit my head off, and at one point, two girls were awkwardly trying to take a selfie on the beach, so I asked if I could take their picture together, and eventually was able to close in on the all-important piece of information that I required: the time.

It was a bit awkward, but I guess I survived. I know this doesn't mean much, but it felt like an accomplishment to me. I probably shouldn't be cherry-picking so hard, but one can't exactly ask someone who clearly doesn't have a phone or a watch (especially on the beach) for the time. But I also cherry-picked to make sure they weren't in the middle of some conversation or activity, so that's probably something else to avoid in the future.

Anyway, you're probably reading this and thinking congratu-fucking-lations, but I think the point here is that it's easy to think you're Superman while you're reading the book, but in practice, your amygdala still explodes in unfamiliar situations.

I plan to keep updating the community on my progress as I go, both to keep me motivated / on-track and to share some (hopefully useful) knowledge in the future.

Thanks for reading.