Bristol, England 2008. I leave my small studio flat, pull my hoodie down over my head, and go out into the night. It’s 1am and and as I leave my residential area I see that the city’s nightlife is in full swing. I can hear the muted beats of music emanating from the insides of bars and clubs, and I can see the young revellers smoking outside or walking home, the guys in shirts and the women all in skirts far too short given the low temperature. I wouldn’t be joining them, though. I was just on a late night cigarette and food run.

I didn’t go out to bars or clubs. I didn’t really go out anywhere. Work, shopping on the way home, and a trip into town to buy a new DVD at the weekend as a treat. I was a recluse, who lived alone and didn’t know anyone else in the city (apart from the 3 people I worked with, but I wouldn’t consider them friends). Watching party people around the bars and clubs was like looking into a different world for me. It was a bit like in olden English times where there would be a big house and the family lived side by side (well, above and below) with the servants. The servants could see into the privileged world of the family, but could never be part of it. That’s how it felt for me when I watched guys around my age walk arm in arm with the mini skirt wearing early 20s hotties. I would see this and feel ‘The Sadness’ that Bodi mentions in Sluts 2.

Arriving home, heaving already scoffed the donner kebab I bought whilst out en route, I began to chain smoke as I thought about how desperately unhappy I was with my life. I was never social or good with women. Despite this I always thought I’d end up with a happy life, a cute girl next door type wife and a couple of kids. Given I was 26 years old at the time and had never had a girl friend (had slept with 6 girls though), I didn’t quite know how this would magically happen. I always just assumed it would. Men got girlfriends, who became their wives, then they had kids. It happened to every man eventually, didn’t it? I always told myself something would happen. Some unknown external event would occur and everything would be fine. Being alone and unhappy like this was just a blip. It wasn’t my real life. Something would happen, and then my proper happy life would start.

Although I wasn’t aware of the pickup community at the time and it would be another year or so till I opened my first set, this is where my pickup journey began. Pacing the floor of my one room flat at 2am on a Saturday morning, somewhere around my 3rd consecutive cigarette, I realised absolutely nothing was going to happen. I realised this wasn’t a blip, it was my life. I realised the only way things would change was if I did something to make them change.

Looking back this was pretty fucking obvious, but at the time it was a mind blowing epiphany. Learning game can teach you many things. One thing you have to learn if you’re ever to have any success with game is that what happens to you is down to you. You have to make things happen. Your long term results are your responsibility and no one else’s. There are no external events which will come and save you. I’ve learned this now, but on that night 8 years ago in Bristol, realising that my fate was in my hands and no one else’s was a life changer for me.

I knew I had to do something, but what? I didn’t know. I continued to pace and lit another cigarette. I decided I need a fresh start. Somewhere full of opportunity. I thought that if I moved to London, the city would be big enough to easily meet all my social ambitions. All I needed to do was be proactive.

This was the start of my player’s journey (well, it took me over a year of living in London before I found the PUA community and got stuck in). Looking back the main thing that motivated me was not wanting to live with the regret of missed opportunity. I knew one day I’d be too old to go out to clubs and pull young women in short skirts. I wanted to know that, when I was old and passed it, I had had those experiences. When you’re old all you really have is your memories, and I wanted some good memories where women were concerned.

Fast forward to London 2016. A lot has happened for me in less than a decade. Ok, so I still live alone in a tiny flat, I’m still fat (I just finished a bulking cycle! Cutting in 2017), I’m still very reclusive and I still pace up and down a lot while smoking. What has changed is the women situation. In September I got a bj from one girl and had sex with two others. Their ages ranged from 21 to 28, their attractiveness levels from OK to pretty hot.

All in all I’ve slept with 78 women since that restless night in my Bristol bedsit, bringing my lifetime total to 84. Baring misfortune or settling down it seems probable I will gain the dubious accolade of joining the 100 notches club.

I now find myself at a bit of a crossroads, At 34 I’m not quite old yet, but I’m not young either. I feel like now is the time to be settling down with one girl (no marriage or kids though). At the same time the idea of settling down concerns me for the following reasons:

• I never cracked daygame. I have had 3 lays from it, but have never consistently gone out, opened and got lays like I did with nightgame. I would love to live the Euro Jaunt lifestyle for a while.
• Despite doing ok in terms of quantity of women, I feel like I underperformed in terms of quality, mainly getting girls in the 5 – 7 range with the odd 8. I think I should have got girls in the 7 – 8 range and the odd 9 to hit the younger, hotter, tighter standard.
• I don’t feel I’m a fully developed man yet. The process of getting good with women and taking the red pill exposes weaknesses in a man’s character, which must be overcomes to make progress. Although my confidence and self esteem has come on a long way, I feel there are still chinks in my armour. For example my default vibe is quite poor. I feel like I have to push game further as it’s the best way to expose and overcome these weaknesses.
• This really is my last chance when it comes to game. I’ve seen men can do OK with it up until about 40. Over 40 they may still get some results, but they’re not going to be as good as they are before 40. As with all those years ago in Bristol, I don’t want to feel the sting of regret later in life. Having said that, as I will reveal later this is not a particularly strong feeling.
• The simple pleasure of fucking hot women.

I haven’t been consistently cold approaching for about 18 months now, and the above list are my motivations to get back into it. There are some things that are making me want to stay out of the game. These are:

• I’ve fucked enough women that any sense of missing out I was scared of all those years ago in Bristol isn’t particularly strong. I’ve fucked enough women to have some great deathbed memories.
• I’m really rusty at game. I haven’t done cold approach in a while, and I’ve never been good at daygame. I’m not sure my motivation is strong enough to make me do the work needed to get good.
• Getting really good at game will take a lot of focus, but I really want to be focusing on other things, like starting a business.
• I would quite like a long term girlfriend to settle down with, something I wasn’t interested in when I first got into game.

In order to motivate myself I will have to immerse myself in daygame. I plan to spend a lot of my spare time reading daygame books & blogs, and watching infield videos online (the few good ones I can find). This won’t be to increase my game knowledge, but rather to flood my brain with daygame. Immerse myself in it. When I do this with a given subject I get obsessed with it, and this will create motivation and enable progress.

Having assessed where I am in life, and having thought about the pros  and cons of getting back into the game I have formulated a plan. I will allow myself one last dance. One last crack of the whip when it comes to game.

From now until January 1st 2019 I will focus on game (and also start a little business on the side). This will be primarily daygame. Due to the way I will be structuring my work over the next 2 years I should be able to spend around 6 months of this period with no job so I can approach pretty much full time (in reality will probably approach 3 hours a day then work on a business for 5 hours). I’ve given the cutoff date as it is because at that time I will still be 36, turning 37 in 2019. Doing this will give me 2 good years to plunder hot, young women, but still leave be (just about) young enough to get a girlfriend in her mid 20s once I’m done with game. Giving myself a definate end date will also add deadline pressure, which will help motivate me to cold approach and improve my game.

Once the deadline hits I will still do some cold approaching, but my focus will switch to finding a girlfriend and starting a business that I can work on full time, instead of increasing the notch count.

I’ve given myself a target of 1,000 approaches by Jan 2018 (inspired by a certain book). I have a counter on my phone I set to 1000 and will decrement towards 0 each time I do a set. It currently shows 996, so there’s a lot of work ahead. Stay tuned.