AA and Pride

I used to be a master at opening. I could open with anything, from Jealous Girlfriend, to I Like Salad, to I'm Going To Hit On You.

At my bootcamp, I had some awareness and some worry over what the girls might think, but I was much more afraid of looking like a loser in front of Grandmaster. I opened without hesitation. And for months afterward, I had very little trouble. I was a guy with underdeveloped social circuitry, pretending to have a defective circuit that made me talk to everyone. Pride was not a problem. I had no self-image to uphold. Any results were positive results.

Actually my social circuitry was not underdeveloped, it was just differently developed. Ugh, I can't believe I just wrote that. Anyway I have always been likable, and I make friends easily, so my normal "everyday" social wiring is healthy. But the bar/club vibe was completely alien to me, and I had extremely bad intuition when it came to courtship situations.

Now the bar/club setting is making more sense and becoming more familiar. I have better intuition with women. Now that I'm starting to see it as normal and not alien, all my old everyday social circuitry which was already healthy, is starting to come in and tell me what's good and what's fucked up and weird. I can't blame failures on me being not myself and dropped into an alien world. Now my results are actually me.

Here is where it starts to get tough. Here is where we find out what kind of Man I am.