Winners are Made of Fail, Losers are Made of Excuses

I have come to the re­al­iza­tion that there is on­ly one rea­son­able way to live life. It con­sists of fac­ing my fears and my fail­ures, over­com­ing each one of them as they sur­face, and then rev­el­ing in the peace­ful wake of their de­struc­tion. Un­til re­cent­ly, I've lived my life with an ev­er-pre­sent fear of pain and how I as­sumed it would crip­ple me. I have al­ways thought that a life with­out pain is a life with hap­pi­ness; that the path best tak­en is the one with the least to be avoid­ed. I thought that be­ing not-un­hap­py was the same as be­ing hap­py. If you're read­ing this then I'll as­sume that you or some­one you know is an in­tro­vert. So­cial­ly anxious and all too ready to duck out of the crowd in fa­vor of hid­ing at home. To those who fit this de­scrip­tion, I want what I talk about with you here to lead you to ques­tion what pains you. What is it that you re­al­ly fear and can you re­think whether you are tru­ly en­joy­ing your life or uti­l­iz­ing ra­tio­n­al­iza­tion as an aide to swal­low the most jagged of pills that are your per­so­n­al fail­ures?


I used to be that way too but then I dis­cov­ered so­cial sky­div­ing: The act of con­vers­ing with strangers ev­ery day for thir­ty days straight. If you're cu­ri­ous enough to be read­ing this then, like me when I first start­ed, you are prob­a­b­ly ner­vous just think­ing about it.


For more than a year pri­or I had been wish­ing I had the strength to go through with the idea. I had read about it on a blog writ­ten by some­one named Brad Bol­len­bach. He had writ­ten about a thir­ty day ex­per­i­ment where he had start­ed a con­ver­sa­tion with a new per­son ev­ery day. He said it had changed his life and been one of his biggest ad­ven­tures. I ad­mired him for think­ing of and at­tempt­ing some­thing so rad­i­cal. I wished that I could live my life like that but in­stead I just re­turned to my com­put­er and my video games. I was all set to live my life vi­cari­ous­ly through other peo­ple's words and cre­a­tions.

Af­ter a year or two of "think­ing" about it and want­ing it, I de­cid­ed one night, about two weeks pri­or to writ­ing this, to com­mit to it. There I was sitt­ing alone in my liv­ing room, the black night sulk­ing si­lent­ly at the win­dow. I was al­so ut­ter­ly bored and I didn't want to be. I had a great job, awe­some friends, a fam­i­ly who cared, and the cutest black dog who loved to just be near me, "How can I re­al­ly be bored?" I thought. I couldn't fig­ure out why I was on the brink of a de­pres­sion when ev­ery­thing in life seemed to be go­ing so well. Sud­den­ly, my mind snapped to­gether like one more rub­ber band be­ing add­ed to a slow­ly grow­ing rub­ber band ball. Some times know­ing what you need in life is like lis­ten­ing to a large orches­tra. I can't pre­dict ev­ery note that they will play but I can feel what sounds need to come next. Just like that, I knew dee­p­ly that I need­ed to fi­nal­ly un­der­take this pro­ject.

"What could go wrong?" my mind rea­soned. Se­ri­ous­ly. It was im­pos­si­ble to re­al­ly fail at it. I could es­sen­tial­ly get away with just say­ing hi to some­one dai­ly if I ab­so­lute­ly need­ed. If the per­son de­cid­ed to not talk to me, that re­jec­tion would be my own per­so­n­al se­cret no one would need to know. If that were true though, why would I fol­low through at all then? Be­fore I un­der­take a new pro­ject I like to en­vi­sion se­ri­ous­ly the de­mands that will be placed up­on me. I try to think of ev­ery­thing else I know that I will want to do and make sure what­ev­er I want to do is im­por­tant enough to stick. That's when I knew I had an ide­al­ized im­age of my­self in my mind that I was guard­ing. Ego­tism like that would eas­i­ly de­feat such a lof­ty goal if it wasn't kept in check so I de­cid­ed to broa­d­en my goal.

I de­cid­ed to publi­cal­ly blog my ex­pe­ri­ence with com­plete hu­mil­i­ty and sin­cer­i­ty. I fig­ured this would have the fol­low­ing ef­fects: Once my friends knew what I was do­ing I fig­ured it would be hard­er to stop be­cause I wouldn't want them to think I was scared of some­thing so trivial. I al­so fig­ured that if I was suc­cess­ful it would act as a way of in­spir­ing or com­fort­ing other in­tro­verts and I fig­ured it would serve as a liv­ing re­cord of an enor­mous ac­com­plish­ment that I could ref­er­ence when­ev­er I need­ed some en­cour­age­ment to keep chal­leng­ing my sta­tus quo.

It's be­come so much more than that.

The night I took up the so­cial sky­div­ing chal­lenge, I cre­at­ed my blog and post­ed an ar­ti­cle ex­plain­ing my in­ten­tions. "To­day is the day I de­cide that now is the time to tack­le this so­cial anxi­e­ty once and for all." I wrote. "To­mor­row is the day I take ac­tion." I had lived in fear of so­cial in­ter­ac­tion for my whole life and be­come so wor­ried that I might have a bad ex­pe­ri­ence that I stopped try­ing to talk to any­one. En­veloped in this self-im­posed fog, I would on­ly talk to peo­ple who ap­proached me first. Un­less some­one said some­thing to me, I would keep com­plete­ly to my­self. That next day I took the plunge.

Where I would nor­mal­ly sit on the bus with my head­phones firm­ly plant­ed in my ears and head lodged in a book, I left my head­phones in my back­pack that day and while keep­ing my fa­vorite book out I fo­cused my at­ten­tion out­ward. At one point a wo­m­an with the same phone as me, on­ly a bit old­er, sat down on my seat. I asked her how she like the old­er ver­sion of her phone and dis­cussed it with her for a bit and she re­spond­ed in the most un­ex­pect­ed way.

She so eas­i­ly and en­er­get­i­cal­ly of­fered in­put and dis­cussed what she did and didn't like about it. She seemed genuine­ly excit­ed to talk to me. I was floored at the ease with which I just had a con­ver­sa­tion with a stranger. How could it be so easy? All of a sud­den my mind was flood­ed with the pres­ence of op­por­tu­ni­ties and the knowl­edge of all of the op­por­tu­ni­ties I had missed through the years. The corn­er stone of mod­ern sci­en­tif­ic thought is to form a hy­poth­e­sis and then test it, yet, I had been so afraid all of my life be­cause I had as­sumed so much and nev­er test­ed my as­sump­tions. I owed more to my life than to just ac­cept the world the way I was told it ex­ist­ed. Why is it that I had formed this life lim­it­ing hy­poth­e­sis of not be­long­ing in so­ci­e­ty and nev­er tak­en the time to prove it?

As it turns out I had proven that hy­poth­e­sis to my­self, just in a severe­ly flawed way. Time and again I re­sist­ed fitt­ing in all of my life. I was some­what poor grow­ing up and bought most of my cloth­es from a thrift store. I didn't know how to fit in and I want­ed it des­per­ate­ly but I knew bet­ter than to try and get the lat­est fashions. I dealt with that by pur­pose­ful­ly re­ject­ing fitt­ing in. By high­s­chool I was buy­ing cheap cloth­es that were ug­ly and then rip­ping them up to make them ugli­er still. Shav­ing my head in patch­es. I couldn't con­trol that I couldn't dress nice­ly and I felt ug­ly so I de­cid­ed to take con­trol and dress as ug­ly as pos­si­ble. Look­ing back on this now, I was show­ing my­self to be not just in­tro­vert­ed but al­so a quit­ter. That's a whole 'nother set of is­sues right there.

It turns out that I was in con­trol though. I could have dis­cussed what I want­ed with my par­ents and ex­pressed my dif­fi­cul­ties and frus­tra­tions, but I held it all in­side and dealt with it in the most pa­thet­ic and de­featist man­n­er pos­si­ble. I felt sor­ry for my­self and sat brood­ing in my room, pos­ing as a tor­tured artist for much too long. Peo­ple did push me away back then, but they did it be­cause I was push­ing them away hard­er. Striv­ing to be unique and thrash­ing about for con­trol, I took con­trol by keep­ing my­self as far as pos­si­ble from hope and from my wants.

It begs the ques­tion: What could I re­al­ly have gained by be­ing so driv­en by fear? How was my life bet­ter when I de­nied my­self the abil­i­ty to try to reach my goals? The an­sw­er is I gained noth­ing and lost ev­ery­thing and this first day of my ex­per­i­ment gave me a hint of what gett­ing it all back would taste like. While it was defi­nite­ly scary, I was hooked and, while I was afraid of what the next day would bring, I want­ed des­per­ate­ly to tempt fate to hurt me.

Over the course of the next cou­ple weeks, I had my ups and downs. Some days were easi­er than others. Some were out­right fail­ures where I couldn't muster dis­cuss­ing any­thing with any­body. On top of that, I would then have to face com­ing home and writ­ing about it publi­c­ly. It's one kind of so­cial anxi­e­ty to talk to peo­ple and it's a whole 'nother to write about be­ing anxious about it.

Re­gard­less, ev­ery­day I wrote about it and pub­lished it and ev­ery­day I would re­ceive new com­ments of sup­port not just from friends but from to­tal strangers too. I would wake up in the morn­ing to a com­ment on my blog like this one: "I read this post first, and I think I'll read the other eight days af­ter I wake up. This sounds like a jour­ney I ought to em­bark on as well..." and another like this: "Heck yes, bro! I love how your posts cont­in­ue to make me pon­der my own in­ter­ac­tions. I think the deep­est thing that I have learned so far is that fear is the thing that blocks the so­cial in­ter­ac­tion." And other times it might be some­thing short but poig­nant: "Com­mend­able and in­spir­ing work. Con­gra­t­u­la­tions."

Then peo­ple start­ed find­ing out about my posts via Twit­ter and my Face­book page. I'd al­so sub­mit them to the news feed I fre­quent­ed since it seemed like some­thing that might be in­ter­est­ing for the niche of peo­ple that fre­quent­ed that site. Un­ex­pect­ed­ly, my posts start­ed with hav­ing about 50-100 peo­ple read­ing them the first day they were post­ed. Who would re­al­ly want to hear me just talk about my life ex­pe­ri­ences? Well ap­par­ent­ly my sto­ry was dee­p­ly per­so­n­al and en­gag­ing to quite a few peo­ple. Within the first week I reg­u­lar­ly had hun­dreds of unique page views on a reg­u­lar dai­ly ba­sis. In my se­cond week of the ex­per­i­ment I was fur­ther sur­prised that I start­ed to see some of my posts reach­ing a cou­ple thou­sand of unique page views. A cou­ple peo­ple here and there that I didn't know were even telling their friends to read. At one point the top en­glish speak­ing tech­ni­cal blog au­thor re­c­om­mend­ed one of my ar­ti­cles to his le­gion of 20,000 or so fol­low­ers on Twit­ter. That same post was read al­most 2,000 times in the first week alone (As of this writ­ing it's been viewed over 2,600 times).

With all of this hap­pen­ing, I be­gan to re­al­ize that th­ese ex­pe­ri­ences I was hav­ing weren't just a strug­gle of mine. Ap­par­ent­ly, there were others out there who want­ed to tack­le th­ese same so­cial anxi­eties that I had. So many of the com­ments I've heard are about peo­ple say­ing that what I was do­ing was great, that they re­spect­ed what I was do­ing, but that they hadn't gone this far with it or couldn't be­lieve how much I had gone through and kept go­ing. Some peo­ple were just excit­ed for me and sought to be sup­por­tive, others watched wish­ing they could do the same and do it as whole heart­ed­ly. It is to that lat­ter camp that this let­ter is re­al­ly ad­dressed. Why haven't you done this yet? Some peo­ple say that this ex­pe­ri­ence sounds so hard and that they just don't want to put in the ef­fort or the time. The risks are too great.

I don't see any risks, how­ev­er. No mat­ter how many times I have failed dur­ing th­ese past two weeks, I have on­ly suc­ceed­ed. The on­ly fail­ure I've seen as a true threat would be to stop try­ing. That's why I re­al­ly don't get what was hold­ing me back all of th­ese years. All it re­al­ly takes is an in­ter­est in other peo­ple and the abil­i­ty to stop as­sum­ing you know how other peo­ple think. I'd like to share the most re­cent ex­pe­ri­ence I've had with you. Keep in mind the hum­ble be­gin­n­ings I came from and you will be­gin to see how my pre­vi­ous­ly un­con­trol­lable in­tro­ver­sion could have de­stroyed one of the best nights I've had in a long time. I'd like to talk about one that hap­pened to me a cou­ple of days ago.

Fri­day (day eigh­teen of my ex­per­i­ment), I failed. I didn't talk to any­one. All day I was lost in a feel­ing of bore­dom and tired­ness. I went out to the movies with a friend and grabbed a bite to eat but af­ter we had fin­ished hang­ing out I de­cid­ed to drive for a bit. I tried to be­lieve just hang­ing out with a fa­miliar face was enough so­cial in­ter­ac­tion for the day, but I couldn't swal­low that. What was hap­pen­ing to me right that mo­ment was the epi­t­ome of my day. I was alone and aim­less in the night. It's cliche and trite but that works too be­cause I felt so pa­thet­ic for not be­ing able to meet my goal. I ac­com­plished it day one! Now I can't on like day eigh­teen? No way.

By mid­night I had end­ed up in Pi­oneer Square walk­ing up 1st or 2nd ave. Peo­ple were walk­ing, talk­ing, laugh­ing, and dizzi­ly stum­bling from foot to foot, club to club. Mu­sic was bump­ing the night and calling peo­ple in­side the bars. I was in­spired by this neo-con­tem­po­rary mi­cro-Baby­lon. I had al­ways wished I was the kind of per­son who could go to a club... well not the kind of per­son to fre­quent one but one who could at least be com­fort­able and in his el­e­ment en­ter­ing one. I just want­ed to feel like I had a choice and that if I'm home on a Fri­day night it was be­cause I pref­ered it not be­cause I was too afraid. So I took a walk to ex­plore what was go­ing on, I was hop­ing I'd have the nerve to ac­tu­al­ly en­ter one of the clubs. I walked past so many dif­fer­ent peo­ple, the whole street seemed like a par­ty. Col­ored lights were ex­plod­ing from in­side while well dressed men and wo­m­en en­tered and exit­ed the club. I was stand­ing still in the back­ground, eyes fix­at­ed on the enor­mous door guard with the black t-shirt and jeans on, pass­ing judge­ment on the ants like me who ner­vous­ly were scur­ry­ing past. I re­treat­ed back in­to the night, away from the rhyth­mic pulse that throbbed the night sky and got in­to my car. I start­ed my car and coun­try mu­sic start­ed blar­ing, "That's my girl, my whole world, but that ain't my truck." Lost wo­m­en, trucks... I felt pa­thet­ic.

That was my biggest fail­ure of the whole pe­ri­od so far. I was cu­ri­ous and I backed out of ex­plor­ing what in­ter­est­ed me be­cause I was scared of be­ing viewed a cer­tain way. What a hor­ri­ble way of be­ing wran­gled in­to a bor­ing life. Not on­ly was my life bor­ing but it was my choice to make it bor­ing. It was al­most ma­sochis­tic. I promised my­self I would re­turn the fol­low­ing night. Typ­i­cal­ly, th­ese types of promis­es are ra­tio­n­al­iza­tions. I couldn't let this hap­pen though. I had noth­ing to dis­cuss for Fri­day night's ar­ti­cle and I knew I couldn't do that two days in a row with­out feel­ing com­plete­ly de­v­as­tat­ed.

This was my thought pro­cess that night: What the fuck is wrong with me? I can't walk in­to a room of peo­ple? I want to live a life to be proud of but I'm un­able to do that. What kind of per­son leads a life like that? To be scared of be­ing seen... To make ex­cus­es for my­self to not meet my goals. A los­er. On­ly losers let them­selves cop out of goals. In the past I may have had fail­ures but I al­ways had faced them fi­nal­ly some­how. Tonight though, I whim­pered all the way home with my tail be­tween my legs. The on­ly I could see my­self sav­ing face for such a bad show­ing was to make Sa­t­ur­day night HUGE. I need­ed to do some­thing an or­der of mag­ni­tude more dif­fi­cult and ei­ther win big or fail big. That was my pu­n­ish­ment.

The next morn­ing I be­gan re­search­ing the dif­fer­ent clubs I could go to. Some of­fered tech­no mu­sic and danc­ing, others were jazz ori­ent­ed. I ul­ti­mate­ly end­ed up de­cid­ing to go for the Blue Moon Tav­ern. It was rock ori­ent­ed, had some pool ta­bles, a bar, and had some pret­ty good re­views from peo­ple. It's not so much a club as it is a dive bar lo­cat­ed in the uni­ver­si­ty dis­trict which usu­al­ly pulls in a pret­ty in­tel­li­gent set of peo­ple. I made the de­ci­sion that I was go­ing to do it and be­gan gett­ing my day's er­rands out of the way so I'd have no ex­cuse with which to chick­en out when the night came. Be­fore I start­ed prep­ping for the night I spent a lit­tle bit of time just surf­ing the net and re­lax­ing. I was try­ing to calm my­self. Re­mind­ing my­self that this was just an ex­plo­ra­to­ry thing most close­ly akin to peo­ple watch­ing. I felt like if I could just go out for an hour or so and have one con­ver­sa­tion this would be an enor­mous step for me. I would be proud of my­self just for go­ing to a club alone.

Just be­fore I logged out of my com­put­er, af­ter fin­ish­ing up my re­search on clubs, my friend came on­line and we mes­saged back and forth a bit. He of­fered to play some games on­line that night but I told him that I couldn't and ex­plained my plans for the night. Shocked, he re­spond­ed, "dude! what are you up to? LOL!" His shock ver­i­fied that this was a just pu­n­ish­ment. Af­ter all, just a cou­ple weeks ago I was a her­mit and now, here I am all of a sud­den, go­ing out ev­ery week­end. He told me my goal should be to take a pic­ture with an at­trac­tive wo­m­an and I just laughed at him. "I'd be hap­py if I could just in­ter­ject my­self in­to a game of pool with a few guys." I told him that if things went as bad­ly as I feared I'd be home in a cou­ple hours and that I'd be able to play then.

I left at about 9:00 pm and I wouldn't get home un­til around 3:00 am.

As I walked up to the front door of The Blue Moon I no­ticed the cres­cent moon shaped neon sign glow­ing above me, a wo­m­an's fig­ure was etched within it. I neared the door and my pulse quick­ened. I could hear the sounds of peo­ple in­side hoot­ing and hol­ler­ing. My mind raced to re­think this hor­ri­ble hor­ri­ble plan but I pushed my­self up to the door be­fore I could back out. The door man took my cov­er charge, stamped the in­side of my wrist and let me in. The stamp was some for­eign look­ing in­sig­nia. Not even an in­sig­nia re­al­ly, just more of a col­lec­tion of like three or four straight lines. I felt very awk­ward and very out of place.

As I en­tered the place I sur­veyed the bar for a good seat and sat such that I could make eye con­tact with ev­ery­one at the bar. I fig­ured that'd make con­ver­sa­tions that much easi­er. It worked pret­ty well. I was able to jump in­to a cou­ple con­ver­sa­tions about base­ball. As an aside, note that base­ball is the most bor­ing sport in­vent­ed by the way es­pe­cial­ly when sober! Bas­ket­ball flows, it's fast paced and is so alive. Base­ball how­ev­er is so slow that it isn't the game that keeps you en­ter­tained it's the high­light reel. Ev­er no­tice how those are the times when most peo­ple are riv­et­ed to the game? Yeah. Ex­act­ly.

When the bar­ten­der fi­nal­ly had a free mo­ment to ask me what I'd have I had to think fast. I al­ways hate an­sw­er­ing this ques­tion. I don't want to seem like I don't be­long here (even though I feel like I don't) and I don't want to or­der some drink with a gir­ly name (Shir­ley Tem­ple, Mai Tai, etc). So I fi­nal­ly just asked the bar­ten­der for the thick­est beer he had. He suggest­ed a porter and I whole heart­ed­ly agreed. You've got­ta re­al­ly know how to en­joy beers to love a thick porter. It took up so much of my thought pro­cess that just the act of en­joy­ing it calmed me down, and of course the al­co­hol did it's trick within the hour.

It start­ed that I just stared up at the TV along with the other pa­trons. I'd shoot a com­ment about the Marin­er's game that was play­ing at one the other guys' com­ments and talk a lit­tle bit. I echoed a grunt or ex­cla­ma­tion at the team do­ing some­thing good ev­ery now and then try­ing to fit in. Fi­nal­ly, a guy I was sitt­ing next to at the bar be­gan talk­ing to me a bit and we start­ed a pret­ty solid con­ver­sa­tion. He found out that I was a pro­gram­mer and then he tried to talk to me about that a lit­tle. It's al­ways awk­ward to have peo­ple who are nice enough to try and dis­cuss pro­gram­ming with me but who aren't com­put­er mind­ed enough to re­al­ly know any­thing about it. It's like a tee­nage girl try­ing to dis­cuss pop cul­ture with a so­ci­ol­o­gy ma­jor. Sim­ple things like words like "al­go­rithm" that we bandy about free­ly are un­wieldy and in­tel­lec­tu­al to peo­ple not fa­miliar with the jar­gon. I can't imagine how to car­ry on any­thing but the sim­plest dis­cus­sion re­gard­ing just that per­son's past ex­pe­ri­ences. I re­mem­ber think­ing some­thing along the lines of "Thank god my goal for the night is done." I knew I had a free tick­et to leave at any point now that I had talked to a cou­ple of peo­ple so I could re­lax a bit and just en­joy the rest of the night. I fig­ured once my beer was done and I got bored with talk­ing to this guy I would leave. Ad­mitt­ed­ly, I was al­ready pret­ty damned bored and I was count­ing own the min­utes.

A good wo­m­an tends to liv­en things up how­ev­er.

And did she ev­er. I was seat­ed at the bar pret­ty near to the door. It gave me the unique abil­i­ty to ob­serve each per­son as they walked in. At this point I was prob­a­b­ly a quar­ter of the way through my beer and was just sort of fid­dling with the glass to keep my hands oc­cu­pied and my mind clear and re­laxed. I no­tice this cute wo­m­an at the door gett­ing her hand stamped for en­try and she was look­ing at me too. She's a lit­tle short­er than me, dark/black hair and a dark com­plexion. SO I was in­trigued but she hon­est­ly didn't look like she'd be too much fun to talk to. Still, I get a spike of ner­vous­ness and look down at my drink and back up at the TV. I was hop­ing she would sit near me but fig­ured she could prob­a­b­ly smell my fear and would sit near one of the many other se­lec­tions of white meat. I couldn't think of what would make me stand out.

She walked in the door and took a seat one stool down from me. I let my­self hope a lit­tle more as my excite­ment grew though I fig­ured that I re­al­ly just got lucky. At one point I saw her look down at her now com­plete­ly smeared stamp and I let my­self be seen that I no­ticed and kind of laughed at it. She said some­thing like "what is this stamp even for?" and so for the first time I caught wind of her per­so­n­al­i­ty. She was a lit­tle sar­cas­tic and pret­ty sharp. It's fair to say that my in­ter­est was piqued. I laughed and point­ed out mine. It was run­n­ing in a red shar­p­ly hor­i­zon­tal streak, "Mine looks like I slit my wrists or some­thing..." she laughed and said "Yeah they're kind of ma­cabre." "At least yours just looks like you were hit or you hit some­one though." She laughed and agreed. Ad­mitt­ed­ly, this is prob­a­b­ly an odd way to start a con­ver­sa­tion with a wo­m­an you're at­tract­ed to. Po­lariz­ing state­ments can be good though. Ei­ther the other per­son will hate it and leave im­me­di­ate­ly or, if they stay, then you're prob­a­b­ly on the same page. We kept toss­ing awk­ward com­ments back and forth at each other. At the time I wasn't sure whether or not she re­al­ly cared about what I had to say since she seemed to talk a lot about her­self and didn't re­al­ly have much to of­fer re­gard­ing what I'd say. Look­ing back at it, I think we were both ner­vous and she just need­ed some more booze. "I'll have a Gay Bak­er." she told the bar­ten­der.

I'm think­ing awe­some op­por­tu­ni­ty to talk to her a bit more. "What's the dif­fer­ence be­tween a Gay Bak­er and a Straight Bak­er?" I asked. "Di­et squirt vs. reg­u­lar squirt..." She car­ried on, "I mean it kin­da makes sense when you think about it..." I just laughed and agreed. Sense of hu­mor: check. Night look­ing up: dou­ble check.

The man I had been talk­ing to pri­or to the wo­m­an show­ing up was in­ter­est­ed as well. He made a point of talk­ing to her, feed­ing her com­pli­ments, be­ing ex­cep­tio­n­al­ly nice; I was hope­less­ly poor at flirt­ing and wasn't do­ing any of that. I was hop­ing that him be­ing about twen­ty years old­er than her and I would be in my fa­vor. All three of us shot the shit un­til the first band start­ed play­ing. She got up to go sit near­er to the band and I fig­ured I was out for the count. She had found a seat near a much old­er gentle­man, laugh­ing and talk­ing. I shrugged it off and felt like I had had a pret­ty good night. I had got­ten even far­ther along than I ex­pect­ed and once again, my night was still a suc­cess. I'd have a lot to write about at this point. Maybe I'd stay for some of the mu­sic and dis­cov­er a cool new band to lis­ten to as well.

I was prob­a­b­ly about two to three quar­ters through my drink so I was feel­ing pret­ty warm and fuzzy now. I sat talk­ing to the man to my left, re­laxed and just let my­self have a good time.

Imagine my sur­prise when she came back to her seat. I fig­ured the best way to cele­brate was to tease her a bit. "What hap­pened to you lis­ten­ing to the band?" I said half mock­ing. Ap­par­ent­ly the guy she was talk­ing to was a fair­ly one sid­ed con­ver­sa­tion where on­ly one side was re­al­ly en­joy­ing it. She men­tioned that she still want­ed to go over and watch the band but she stayed put. I took a stab at fail­ure and left her alone with the other guy at the bar while I stood over where ev­ery­one was watch­ing the band, rock­ing along to the mu­sic.

The mu­sic was pret­ty good ac­tu­al­ly. It turns out that two out of the three bands that night gave out free CDs of their mu­sic to boot. It was an awe­some at­mo­sphere. Then it got bet­ter.

I felt a poke in my side and it was the wo­m­an from bar smil­ing at me as she was en­joy­ing the mu­sic. The other guy was still at the bar. I smiled back at her, said it was a good band and then turned back to watch awe­some rock in ac­tion. For the rest of the night we cont­in­ued talk­ing and laugh­ing, she danced a bit and I kind of rocked to the mu­sic (I don't dance well at all). At one point she talked about how she want­ed to learn to play the gui­tar so I of­fered to help her out a bit and got her num­ber and she asked for mine too. We kept talk­ing un­til we left the club at 2:00 am. We walked with each other about half way to my car and her apart­ment un­til I had to make a turn. I asked her a cou­ple times if she was sure she didn't want me to walk her home and she said she was sure so I said good­night and said it was nice meet­ing her.

Ad­mitt­ed­ly, there were fears hold­ing me back through­out the night. I should have been more con­fi­dent with her and I should've gone for her stronger if I want­ed her. When I put those fears I suc­cumbed to in per­spec­tive with the fears I over­came though, I over­came a lot. The fail­ures I ex­pe­ri­enced that night are re­al­ly just fu­ture chal­lenges for my­self. I can't con­quer the world in a night but I can sure as hell make some good progress.

I've shared as many de­tails as I have, as em­bar­rass­ing as it is, be­cause I think we so of­ten wran­gle our­selves in­to this tiny niche of life's op­por­tu­ni­ties just be­cause we nev­er chal­lenge our pre­con­cep­tions. I al­ways used to think how I'm not a bar guy and I don't dance so there I was. That was "who I am" and my lot in life. Just from the cou­ple ex­pe­ri­ences I've out­lined, I hope I've shown how wrong that dis­eased idea is.

All of this drive to be a bet­ter per­son was cre­at­ed be­cause I "failed". If it weren't for my fail­ure on Fri­day, Sa­t­ur­day would nev­er have hap­pened. So now I dare you to tell me that fail­ure is bad. "But peo­ple will think less of me!" Who cares?! You'll be­come even bet­ter for it and those peo­ple who are stupid enough to look down on your fail­ures are al­most cer­tain­ly not fail­ing them­selves which means they'll nev­er im­prove and will be doomed to have you eclipse them. For those of you afraid of be­ing em­bar­rassed and think­ing that it isn't worth the risk, imagine how much more em­bar­rassed you'd be if you had to write about this ex­pe­ri­ence and show the world how big of a goof ball you are. Thou­sands of peo­ple read some of what I write, re­mem­ber? And I've bared my soul dai­ly for over two weeks now. I can't run or hide from my fail­ures- they're all sitt­ing out there on the in­ter­net, and I'm hap­pi­er now than I've ev­er been. You can lie to your­self and say but he's bet­ter than me at X. You can think, ah he's re­al­ly just been a la­tent ex­tro­vert all of his life. Re­al­ly, it's that we're all just hu­man. None of us are spe­cial. We all are born with a most­ly equi­va­lent set of tools with which to make our life great. What se­parates the win­n­ers from the losers is that losers fail and then make ex­cus­es. Win­n­ers fail but strive to un­der­s­tand why. They will nev­er re­peat that fail­ure again, whereas losers will fail in the same way time and again for their whole life. Those of you who are still think­ing of ex­cep­tions like "but.." and "you don't un­der­s­tand..." are ra­tio­n­al­iz­ing your fears and hold­ing back your life from be­ing sev­er­al or­ders of mag­ni­tude more exc­it­ing and ful­filling than it is right now.

I've heard other peo­ple say "Sure it sounds so sim­ple and easy when you say it but I want to see what hap­pens when you get re­ject­ed. It's hard to feel pos­i­tive about that." The peo­ple who say that are re­al­ly just say­ing this: "It's hard to feel pos­i­tive." Be­fore you start on so­cial sky­div­ing start there. I'm to the point in my per­so­n­al de­vel­op­ment where even be­ing de­fraud­ed out of thou­sands of dol­lars was some­thing I was able to take pos­i­tive­ly (af­ter the ini­tial shock wore off of course!). In my mind, op­ti­mism is the pow­er to take the ran­dom help­ful and hurt­ful events that oc­cur in your life and find a syn­er­gy amongst them that can pow­er you through to any goal you set your mind to. If you don't know how to spin an event to feel like a pos­i­tive ef­fect don't blame it on it be­ing im­pos­si­ble, that's just another lame ex­cuse. Just keep think­ing about it and how it's im­pact­ed your life. You'll fig­ure it out even­tu­al­ly.

I've been try­ing to do things I've nev­er done be­fore and I am sure that I've made my­self look like a jack ass on more than one oc­ca­sion. The wo­m­an I met Sa­t­ur­day night even prob­a­b­ly even thought that on at least one oc­ca­sion- but she still wants to hang out again. Think about that. You can fail and win si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly. I have defi­nite­ly looked like a jack ass at some point to other peo­ple dur­ing my ex­per­i­ment (like the time I tried talk­ing to an ob­vi­ous­ly dis­in­ter­est­ed mar­ried wo­m­an on the bus). How­ev­er, ev­ery­time I've thought that I might look like a jack ass but had a great time was one of the most ex­hi­larat­ing mo­ments of my life. The cou­ple of times I wound up feel­ing em­bar­rassed I even­tu­al­ly came to un­der­s­tand that the pain and ner­vous cramp­ing I felt was re­al­ly just me strug­gling to grow and learn a new les­son. I've re­al­ized that if I use my fear of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing pain as a rea­son to avoid try­ing new things, all I'll re­al­ly end up avoid­ing is life. In­stead I now try to fo­cus on lis­ten­ing to my pain to help me bet­ter un­der­s­tand my wants and goals and us­ing it less to de­ter­mine whether or not I'm near­ing them.

I'd rather en­joy this awe­some life I've been liv­ing and ex­pe­ri­ence a lit­tle pain than not live at all. If you're not feel­ing pain dai­ly, you're not liv­ing.