It seems like there are a lot of likeminded fellows on this forum, so I figure this will be a sufficient venue for me to get my thoughts down in writing and possibly elicit some advice. I am going to attempt to write this with the greatest amount of self-awareness and objectivity of which I am currently capable. Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to read this.
I am a 22 year old male currently paralyzed by the multitude of options as to what path I should take in life. Before I elaborate on my current predicament, I will describe the relevant details of my life up until this point.
After graduating high school, I elected to remain living at home and attend a local community college. This continued on and off for the next 3 years, which was in retrospect a period of deep stagnation. You see, I feel that for much of my life I've been playing out a "loser script."
I grew up in a very small town in the midwest with very little in the way of culture outside of high school sports and an overall shitkicker mentality. As I was not particularly inclined towards these sorts of things, I became very withdrawn, especially after my sophomore year of high school, and began living very much inside my head. However, I don't feel this was an altogether negative occurence, as this period of isolation resulted in intense introspection and an interest in various esoteric subjects. In fact, I began reading the work of Robert Greene at the age of 17, which was unquestionably responsible for my discovery of the seduction community later on down the road. On the flip side, spending so much time alone while most others were out socializing did result in several prolonged depressions and a degree of social retardation.
My situation is an interesting one because I do not feel as if I was an out and out reject at any point in my life. In high school I was on good terms, "friends" you could say, with a wide variety of my fellow students, including several who would've been considered "popular," yet it was always as if I was on the outside of looking in. My peers' attitude towards me seemed to be a subtle mixture of interest and confusion, and in some cases, outright hostility. However, for most of my life, I would have been considered, without a doubt, "beta" by most discerning minds.
My lack of confidence stems, I believe, from overly indulgent parents (I was, and still am, a spoiled child) and a disastrous two year LTR that lasted from the ages of 17 to 19 (during which I lost my virginity at the age of 18). The details of said relationship are honestly too painful and humiliating (and mostly repressed) to translate into text, but let's just say that there were several episodes that would've fit neatly into one of Roissy's infamous "Beta of the Month" featurettes. Just awful on a really visceral level.
However, the reasons "why" I seem to lack confidence are not really important to me. I'm not interested in thorough psychoanalysis or anything like that. As I said, I've just sort of been running on a "loser script," which I believe can be fixed if not completely reversed through a bit of careful metaprogramming.
Enter the seduction community. Right around my 20th birthday, I obtained a copy of The Game by Neil Strauss. As a perpetually horny self-development/strategy junkie, it seemed like a perfect fit. After finishing the book, I hit the field, feeling pretty excited and confident about these new techniques. I look back on that time with fondness; doing card tricks in strip clubs, utterly absurd peacocking, etc. I was really going after it. Yet, with regard to the crimson arts, I have always been a dabbler. I've never worked on these techniques with enough dedication to accumulate any noteworthy results or a reliable skill set.
The next chapter in my life began last year when I transferred from community college to a state university, living away from home for the first time in my life. I consider my first semester at university to be probably the highest point in my life thus far, but looking back, it's clear that I swung way too far in the other direction. In my dorm, I quickly made friends with most of the guys on my floor, many of whom would be considered very "alpha" by community standards. It was amazing to me the way in which these guys had completely internalized the game tactics that I had been studying for the past two years, all the while completely unaware of what they were doing. Their moxie was contagious.
After about a week at college, I became positively manic. Away from the stifling presence of my parents and everyone and everything that I had known before, I was able to completely reinvent myself. I started painting my nails black, wearing eyeliner, etc. With total congruence, I might add! I was constantly singing, dancing, and approaching girls with an insane level of confidence. The results were fantastic... at first. My friends and I were partying every single night, and we quickly became known as the "cool" guys in my dorm. My manic vibe seemed to infect everyone around me, and I was getting IOIs from the kinds of girls that I never thought I would have a shot at in this lifetime. I remember one instance in which my friends and I had a naked girl in one of our dorm rooms, serving us shots of Patron (that she had paid for in order to hang out with us). Straight up rockstar shit.
I ended up dating this gothic chick (cold approach) who was a solid 7. Initially, I made all the right moves. It was effortless, as if I was on autopilot. After about a week, while drinking together, we ended up fucking, thereby ending what had been an 18 month dry spell for your humble narrator. Post-coitus, however, my inner beta reared his ugly head. The exquisite pleasure of sexual union (with the hottest girl I had ever been with thus far in my life) was too overwhelming for my flimsy rockstar persona. I became clingy, needy... beta. Needless to say, HBgoth jumped ship shortly thereafter, in a fit of buyers' remorse.
Yet all was not lost in terms of my college experience. The delicate ego massage of female sexual submission had only served to fuel my mania, and after one night of mild depression, I was back in the game with a vengeance. The drugs, alcohol, and female attention continued to flow liberally.
About halfway through the semester, I realized that my grades were tanking, badly. I had been too caught up in the whirlwind of hedonism to even bother studying (or going to class half of the time). This led to another bout of depression, especially in light of the fact that many of my friends were doing well academically. The difference is that they were studying in their downtime, while I was drinking alone, listening to music, and dicking around on the internet. I still feel guilty about this, as my parents paid for my semester at college and I sort of took advantage of their generosity since they didn't monitor my academic progress whatsoever. They still don't know the situation with my grades (I lied), and they never will as long as I have anything to do with it. Pretty shitty.
At the same time, a lot of my friends were tiring of my "confident" persona, which at this point had taken the form of an abrasive arrogance and a suffocating ego, a filmy screen barely covering a lifetime's worth of insecurity and self-doubt. The semester ended in a rather anticlimactic fashion, and I returned home for Winter break.
During the break, I was constantly preoccupied with the abysmal state of my semester grades, and its implications for my academic future. I contemplated dropping out of college and attending a vocational school for filmmaking (an option I'm still considering) which would start this September. However, as the beginning of the Winter semester drew closer, I decided that I couldn't stand living at home for the 9 months before film school began. The taste of freedom I had had while living on my own had been too sweet. I promptly returned to the university.
This is when everything just sort of fell apart. I immediately fell into what was probably the worst depression of my life. It was obvious to everyone around me that I was not really who I had presented myself to be, or at least that there was another, far less attractive side to my personality. I completely deflated, in full view of everyone that had previously deferred to me and even sometimes mimicked my behaviors. The freedom which I had previously found liberating became frightening and overwhelming. It was as if a karmic loan shark had come to collect for the sustained ego trip I had been granted the previous semester. Just the pits.
I'm not going to go into as much detail regarding my experience during the winter semester as it is mostly redundant. I spent most of my time in my room with the door shut, did zero (!) approaches... you get the idea. I felt like human garbage.
So where am I now? I moved back home with my parents (they are divorced so I split my time between their two houses) for the summer. I no longer feel as defeated as I did this past semester at school, though I'm not particularly inspired or enthused about life either.
A positive aspect of my current situation is that I have virtually no attachments. I'm pretty much a blank slate. I have no debt, no career that I'm tied down to, and at the moment, no social relationships to speak of. The only problem is that I have no savings of any kind, so whatever I do, I'm going to be working from the ground up.
A big question is whether or not to return to college in the fall. Due to my slovenly academic performance at the aforementioned institution, it is simply not feasible for me to return there. Most of my social relationships at that school are pretty fucked at this point, anyway. If I were to transfer to a new university, I would have to send them only my community college transcript in order to be accepted. However, I have decided that if I were to return to college, I would only do so with student loans, as I already feel guilty about squandering my parents' hard earned money. Perhaps if my education becomes my financial responsibility, I will spend my time there more wisely.
Still, I don't know if I want to take on that debt, especially considering the fact that I'm unsure as to what I even want to study. The same predicament applies to the vocational film school that I mentioned earlier. That program costs $10000 for the year, all of which I would have to take on as debt. Is it worth it, or should I perhaps drift and try to sort of "find myself" for the next year? I've considered various options, such as volunteering on an organic farm, spending time in a Zen monastery, accumulating money through affiliate marketing, starting a business, etc. I also have a strong desire to travel, being particularly inspired by Roosh's writings, but I don't know how that would be possible considering my current lack of finances. My question is, what is the best way to attain the freedom to travel extensively for long periods of time? Attend college, get a career, and save the income generated from said career, or is there a better way?
Damn, that's a lot of writing, and there's quite a bit that I still haven't covered, but I'm going to leave it there for now and see if anyone even reads this. Then, based on your responses, I will perhaps elaborate and go into more detail.
P.S. - I wasn't sure what forum this thread belonged in, as it involves different aspects of all of them, but if you guys are anything like me, you read all of the individual forums anyway, so I'm sure it will find an audience.
I am a 22 year old male currently paralyzed by the multitude of options as to what path I should take in life. Before I elaborate on my current predicament, I will describe the relevant details of my life up until this point.
After graduating high school, I elected to remain living at home and attend a local community college. This continued on and off for the next 3 years, which was in retrospect a period of deep stagnation. You see, I feel that for much of my life I've been playing out a "loser script."
I grew up in a very small town in the midwest with very little in the way of culture outside of high school sports and an overall shitkicker mentality. As I was not particularly inclined towards these sorts of things, I became very withdrawn, especially after my sophomore year of high school, and began living very much inside my head. However, I don't feel this was an altogether negative occurence, as this period of isolation resulted in intense introspection and an interest in various esoteric subjects. In fact, I began reading the work of Robert Greene at the age of 17, which was unquestionably responsible for my discovery of the seduction community later on down the road. On the flip side, spending so much time alone while most others were out socializing did result in several prolonged depressions and a degree of social retardation.
My situation is an interesting one because I do not feel as if I was an out and out reject at any point in my life. In high school I was on good terms, "friends" you could say, with a wide variety of my fellow students, including several who would've been considered "popular," yet it was always as if I was on the outside of looking in. My peers' attitude towards me seemed to be a subtle mixture of interest and confusion, and in some cases, outright hostility. However, for most of my life, I would have been considered, without a doubt, "beta" by most discerning minds.
My lack of confidence stems, I believe, from overly indulgent parents (I was, and still am, a spoiled child) and a disastrous two year LTR that lasted from the ages of 17 to 19 (during which I lost my virginity at the age of 18). The details of said relationship are honestly too painful and humiliating (and mostly repressed) to translate into text, but let's just say that there were several episodes that would've fit neatly into one of Roissy's infamous "Beta of the Month" featurettes. Just awful on a really visceral level.
However, the reasons "why" I seem to lack confidence are not really important to me. I'm not interested in thorough psychoanalysis or anything like that. As I said, I've just sort of been running on a "loser script," which I believe can be fixed if not completely reversed through a bit of careful metaprogramming.
Enter the seduction community. Right around my 20th birthday, I obtained a copy of The Game by Neil Strauss. As a perpetually horny self-development/strategy junkie, it seemed like a perfect fit. After finishing the book, I hit the field, feeling pretty excited and confident about these new techniques. I look back on that time with fondness; doing card tricks in strip clubs, utterly absurd peacocking, etc. I was really going after it. Yet, with regard to the crimson arts, I have always been a dabbler. I've never worked on these techniques with enough dedication to accumulate any noteworthy results or a reliable skill set.
The next chapter in my life began last year when I transferred from community college to a state university, living away from home for the first time in my life. I consider my first semester at university to be probably the highest point in my life thus far, but looking back, it's clear that I swung way too far in the other direction. In my dorm, I quickly made friends with most of the guys on my floor, many of whom would be considered very "alpha" by community standards. It was amazing to me the way in which these guys had completely internalized the game tactics that I had been studying for the past two years, all the while completely unaware of what they were doing. Their moxie was contagious.
After about a week at college, I became positively manic. Away from the stifling presence of my parents and everyone and everything that I had known before, I was able to completely reinvent myself. I started painting my nails black, wearing eyeliner, etc. With total congruence, I might add! I was constantly singing, dancing, and approaching girls with an insane level of confidence. The results were fantastic... at first. My friends and I were partying every single night, and we quickly became known as the "cool" guys in my dorm. My manic vibe seemed to infect everyone around me, and I was getting IOIs from the kinds of girls that I never thought I would have a shot at in this lifetime. I remember one instance in which my friends and I had a naked girl in one of our dorm rooms, serving us shots of Patron (that she had paid for in order to hang out with us). Straight up rockstar shit.
I ended up dating this gothic chick (cold approach) who was a solid 7. Initially, I made all the right moves. It was effortless, as if I was on autopilot. After about a week, while drinking together, we ended up fucking, thereby ending what had been an 18 month dry spell for your humble narrator. Post-coitus, however, my inner beta reared his ugly head. The exquisite pleasure of sexual union (with the hottest girl I had ever been with thus far in my life) was too overwhelming for my flimsy rockstar persona. I became clingy, needy... beta. Needless to say, HBgoth jumped ship shortly thereafter, in a fit of buyers' remorse.
Yet all was not lost in terms of my college experience. The delicate ego massage of female sexual submission had only served to fuel my mania, and after one night of mild depression, I was back in the game with a vengeance. The drugs, alcohol, and female attention continued to flow liberally.
About halfway through the semester, I realized that my grades were tanking, badly. I had been too caught up in the whirlwind of hedonism to even bother studying (or going to class half of the time). This led to another bout of depression, especially in light of the fact that many of my friends were doing well academically. The difference is that they were studying in their downtime, while I was drinking alone, listening to music, and dicking around on the internet. I still feel guilty about this, as my parents paid for my semester at college and I sort of took advantage of their generosity since they didn't monitor my academic progress whatsoever. They still don't know the situation with my grades (I lied), and they never will as long as I have anything to do with it. Pretty shitty.
At the same time, a lot of my friends were tiring of my "confident" persona, which at this point had taken the form of an abrasive arrogance and a suffocating ego, a filmy screen barely covering a lifetime's worth of insecurity and self-doubt. The semester ended in a rather anticlimactic fashion, and I returned home for Winter break.
During the break, I was constantly preoccupied with the abysmal state of my semester grades, and its implications for my academic future. I contemplated dropping out of college and attending a vocational school for filmmaking (an option I'm still considering) which would start this September. However, as the beginning of the Winter semester drew closer, I decided that I couldn't stand living at home for the 9 months before film school began. The taste of freedom I had had while living on my own had been too sweet. I promptly returned to the university.
This is when everything just sort of fell apart. I immediately fell into what was probably the worst depression of my life. It was obvious to everyone around me that I was not really who I had presented myself to be, or at least that there was another, far less attractive side to my personality. I completely deflated, in full view of everyone that had previously deferred to me and even sometimes mimicked my behaviors. The freedom which I had previously found liberating became frightening and overwhelming. It was as if a karmic loan shark had come to collect for the sustained ego trip I had been granted the previous semester. Just the pits.
I'm not going to go into as much detail regarding my experience during the winter semester as it is mostly redundant. I spent most of my time in my room with the door shut, did zero (!) approaches... you get the idea. I felt like human garbage.
So where am I now? I moved back home with my parents (they are divorced so I split my time between their two houses) for the summer. I no longer feel as defeated as I did this past semester at school, though I'm not particularly inspired or enthused about life either.
A positive aspect of my current situation is that I have virtually no attachments. I'm pretty much a blank slate. I have no debt, no career that I'm tied down to, and at the moment, no social relationships to speak of. The only problem is that I have no savings of any kind, so whatever I do, I'm going to be working from the ground up.
A big question is whether or not to return to college in the fall. Due to my slovenly academic performance at the aforementioned institution, it is simply not feasible for me to return there. Most of my social relationships at that school are pretty fucked at this point, anyway. If I were to transfer to a new university, I would have to send them only my community college transcript in order to be accepted. However, I have decided that if I were to return to college, I would only do so with student loans, as I already feel guilty about squandering my parents' hard earned money. Perhaps if my education becomes my financial responsibility, I will spend my time there more wisely.
Still, I don't know if I want to take on that debt, especially considering the fact that I'm unsure as to what I even want to study. The same predicament applies to the vocational film school that I mentioned earlier. That program costs $10000 for the year, all of which I would have to take on as debt. Is it worth it, or should I perhaps drift and try to sort of "find myself" for the next year? I've considered various options, such as volunteering on an organic farm, spending time in a Zen monastery, accumulating money through affiliate marketing, starting a business, etc. I also have a strong desire to travel, being particularly inspired by Roosh's writings, but I don't know how that would be possible considering my current lack of finances. My question is, what is the best way to attain the freedom to travel extensively for long periods of time? Attend college, get a career, and save the income generated from said career, or is there a better way?
Damn, that's a lot of writing, and there's quite a bit that I still haven't covered, but I'm going to leave it there for now and see if anyone even reads this. Then, based on your responses, I will perhaps elaborate and go into more detail.
P.S. - I wasn't sure what forum this thread belonged in, as it involves different aspects of all of them, but if you guys are anything like me, you read all of the individual forums anyway, so I'm sure it will find an audience.
