Yet more pick-up updatery

About three weeks since my last update on this ongoing project to see if any of the advice out there for men on how to get a date with a woman, is any use to this introverted tubby bitch dude (Yours Truly).

With the unfortunate interlude of a funeral (not the best place to pick up chicks, especially when most of them are your cousins!) and some general issues of feeling poorly, the basic report is as follows:

It feels as though everyone else in my home town is pair-bonded except me! **wail!** (For more on this patheticness, see my last update...)

Let that be as it may. There are a fair few women I spot when I go out shopping or whatever who do not have barrier indicators up, who are attractive, have body language that suggests at least a pleasant surface temperament, and so on. Women, in other words, whom I would at least like to find out if they are interested in dating (me). As discussed in previous updates, most often the problem is that I can't form something to say until after she's moved on and the opportunity has passed (again, see my discussion of this in my last update).

Today, though, I went for two approaches at the supermarket and I did it by doing my best to go with the advice of "just say anything, confidently". Honest truth? Didn't go so well.

First one I actually had a bit of a heads-up: I saw her going into the supermarket while I was still collecting my shallow trolley from the trolley rank. Figured I would have a chance to catch up once in the store while she was picking her first item or two, so I had a chance to think how I might do it. Fortune favours the brave, 'tis said, and so it seemed on this occasion. I saw her visiting a few shelves, gaze across them for a while and then come away with an empty basket. The next shelf was one I was going to anyway, so I had my opening remark: "You look like someone spoilt for choice!"

It seemed to work at first, we shared a few words about the difficulty of making choices, I got some encouraging giggles, just as I was about to move the conversation along and (hopefully) reel her in and get her number, it seemed to stutter and she went on her way. Bummer. (I wonder about the "you look like..." form, and whether it would be better to make an "I" statement about what I've seen to invite shared connection, for example, in this case would I have done better to open with, "Hey, I have trouble choosing sometimes, too!"?) So anyway, it looked good but crashed and burned. That was with a line I was able to line up before I made the actual approach, though.

The second shot I got was when two very attractive women in (I would guess) their early twenties joined the check-out queue right behind me. I looked directly at them and just said the first thing that came into my head, with all the confidence that I feel at my best. This comment turned out to be, "Wow! My lucky day!" (so, my brain went with "Direct game" there, it seems). Zero reaction. I mean, not even the so-called "stinky-fart face" (the wrinkled-nose look of disgust, that resembles the expression of someone who's just smelt a stinky fart and often signifies a guy's failure to connect with a woman). Just cut me out and started talking to each other about something completely different.

I'm willing to bet that my brain is not a reliable source of things to say on the spur of the moment, and that there are probably myriad reasons why that comment was a very bad one to use as an opening line.

(I tend to say that the reason I overthink everything is because in my life so far, the consequences of overthinking have been a whole lot better than the consequences of underthinking.)

What's the next step? Well, I'm counting the first encounter as a positive experience (she didn't look at me funny, I didn't get a disgusted look on her face, I did get some encouraging giggles and responses) I feel like the evidence is nudging me towards "think faster" rather than "don't think, just do" as the solution to making more cold approaches, and who knows, maybe I will get better at that soon and what my results sky-rocket? It feels like I'm knocking at the door with all this close-but-no-cigar conversations that I've been reporting here. With more knowledge that I can, in fact, initiate conversations, the confidence grows, and with that, hopefully, the likelihood of better results.

The quest continues to find good advice that works for me.