Surveying the Topography

[Conquistador]

I'm still getting my sleep schedule under control but overall I'm beginning to get things in order. Now I have to get cracking on my long to-do list.

Anyway...

Chase's article about consummate vs. limited seduction really got me thinking. Up to now, all of my seductions have been limited. In some cases, very much so.

The time has come to change that.

I need to have a long think about what I really want. Until then, it's rather hard to act with intent.

Once I know what I want, I'll be ready to jump back into the game. This time, playing for keeps.

I'm also going to do my best to retain as much as possible.

At the same time, my #1 priority remains moving out. Unless I do so within a month or so, things will be very difficult during the spring. It really is a must-win situation.

I've been procrastinating for months about a fabulous money-making opportunity: $100 for 1 hour or so a week. Why? Because it isn't going away, no matter what. And I have to do a minimal amount of legwork to get started.

I'm going to deal with it within a week, hopefully starting the process tomorrow. Once I'm getting paid from that, all I have to do is find a roommate and an apartment.

Time to play

 

[HammerEditor]

ve been procrastinating for months about a fabulous money-making opportunity: $100 for 1 hour or so a week. Why? Because it isn't going away, no matter what. And I have to do a minimal amount of legwork to get started.

Ha, same here, my opportunity would make $70-100/day in profit passively as long as I maintain the code. But I have procrastinated for 5 months. I finally got back to it last week

But now I have the same issue as you where I have to move again

 

[Conquistador]

I think I've finally dealt with my sleep schedule. It wasn't easy.

I've been thinking about attachment styles. I was definitely an avoidant type up until the last few years, but it remains to be seen how secure I'll be with girls.

Overall, assuming I can finish recovering from the burnout of the fall, I like where I'm going. And I intend to go back into the field by the end of the week. Hopefully multiple times.

 

[Conquistador]

By the end of the day, I'll have gotten much more done than in a while. Baseline first, game later. There will probably be random encounters though. There always are.

The truth is that periods of "ups" and "downs" are to some extent necessary to make progress. Expansion-consolidation, sleeping and waking, the Intel tick-tock (before their Process-Arch-Optimize model)...it's a fundamental part of nature.

I recently realized that I might not be where I am today if not for many unpleasant life-changing moments. Including the "lost years" of my mid-late teens and the pandemic, which I nonetheless view as regrettable.

One of my big life goals is to build myself an environment that allows for sustainable constant growth. Moving out will help, but I don't know how big the improvement will really be. Especially as independence will be a gradual process.

I want to become the best I can be before the spring semester starts, within the obvious time constraints. Now that I'm regaining functionality, I find that I'm wiser, thinner, and better paid than ever.



In terms of game, I've definitely become more self-aware during my hibernation. And, in a chill way, I'm pretty pumped to throw myself back into the wider world.

And in the last few days, something interesting and unexpected did happen. While it's unlikely to lead anywhere physical, it's very valuable experience, apart from its intrinsic benefits.

 

[HammerEditor]

Intel tick-tock (before their Process-Arch-Optimize model)

You are getting too nerdy here

Including the "lost years" of my mid-late teens and the pandemic, which I nonetheless view as regrettable.

It is the exact same way for me, but worse since I am now 25 years old and missed out on girl opportunities in college. I was occupied with nonsense during the lost years of 2020-2021. My only achievement really was getting an excellent remote job. Don't be too hard on yourself since you missed out on much less than I did

Now that I'm regaining functionality, I

I am losing functionality. More specifically I'll lose my driver license in the summer after I was caught speeding over triple digits after a late-night PUA session. But at least it encourages me to game hard while I still can

 

[Conquistador]

It seems like my progress is almost always slower than I expect. Still, I feel a new strength inside myself. I merely have to start doing things, and do what it takes to get myself in state.

My sleep habits are still not quite where I want to be at.

I now have less than a month before my break ends. There really isn't any time to waste. Already, I might have to pare down some of my secondary objectives for the winter.



I did do a brief outing mid-week. Nothing specifically notable, but a lot of small things.


There really isn't much else to say. But there sure as hell is a lot to be done.

 

[Conquistador]

Today I did my first serious outing in a while.

And I made 0 approaches despite running a couple dozen intercepts.

I felt dopey and sleepy the whole day. My mind was blank. I also wasn't sure what my own frame was, and having not been on my own campus, or any other, in weeks, I felt like a stranger in a strange land.

I also picked the wrong time of day. There were plenty of pretty girls about, but most of them were distracted and/or closed off.

It's all good honestly. I learned some things.

I'm going to go to bed early and hopefully get up earlier. Tomorrow, I want to really start cracking on stuff.

Then maybe Wednesday, I'll go back to study + game and actually make some approaches.

 

[Conquistador]

Well, I successfully made it to bed quite early. Woke up after 3 hours, which is totally natural. I'm going back to sleep as soon as I finish posting this.

Breaking news: If I'm reading her most recent Instagram posts and stories correctly, an older girl whose advances I had declined while she was in the process of breaking up is now more than friends with a fellow artsy lady. I had heard of stuff like that happening, but it was good to see a real-life example. Regardless, that lead was already closed. Lol



I need to work on networking and building an actual social circle at college, as well as preparing for spring. And of course, I still haven't found a roommate, although I'm taking action on that.

I don't have a good feeling about the winter, actually. I lost all momentum, am getting little to no outside support about being more organized ( a key area of effort) or anything else, and in general don't feel like I'm getting anywhere. It does seem to be starting to turn around this week, but honestly, I have no idea what I'm doing anymore.

I'm planning some small wardrobe upgrades in the next week or two, but really, I need a lot more clothes than that, in my new size. Part of the problem is that my parents, who would normally pay for basic clothing, have placed the whole family under austerity, partly due to a sibling's tuition having been raised to an obnoxiously disproportionate level.

To be honest, regular lays would probably be a game changer in my life. But at the same time, ngl, I'm much less confident about the dating process than I am about LMR and sex, or the opening and first conversation. So I need to work on bridging the two ends of my game and meeting in the middle.

Specifically, somehow I didn't go on any pre-planned dates this semester. I went on a one-on-one trip that turned into a date, and then failed to follow up effectively despite her clearly liking me. More recently, I had something similar and less wholesome happen with the girl I mentioned at the beginning of this post. I went on a messy instadate with a classmate that I'd rather not remember. I asked another classmate out and got an easy and mildly enthusiastic "yes" but she ended up flaking for legitimate wildcard reasons and I didn't try to arrange another one. I closed a number or three after showing interest but haven't anything with them.

Another problem is that I haven't done that much "just hanging out and chilling" with friends for years. I recently took the plunge and started moving away from the guy from HS who had been my closest friend for the entire pandemic because our friendship had gradually slid into an unproductive and stagnant direction, because our paths had diverged too much, and because he wasn't that much of a good friend anymore. I'm used to operating alone, so I don't actually feel more lonely, but I really should get myself a decent social life. So I'm going to work on that too.

The immediate plan is to 1) get myself in the best overall shape possible as I warm up for the spring and get back into things and 2) to make a concentrated, energetic, and above all organized effort to deal with as many tasks as I can, as quickly as I can.


Some good news to finish off:

-It looks like I might be starting a good retention streak for the first time in ages.
-I can easily get much more potential value from my logistical breakthroughs of December. In progress.
-Looking back, I've made a lot of progress in all areas of my life since I started this journal.
-I've become ever more emotionally independent of my biological family, despite still living with them for now.
-When the semester starts, I should be able to continue with several leads, most of whom are unlikely to have gotten attached in the meantime, for various reasons. Plus, my professor persuaded me to start a club, which should be fun and interesting, and obviously good for both my status and my application/résumé.

Sometimes, the hardest part is just before the breakthrough.

To quote my favorite classmate from last semester:
"Ok Surveyor, let's do this s--t!"

 

[Conquistador]

I was discussing my game (or lack thereof) with someone fairly senior here yesterday and he suggested that moving out and having the ability to pull her back to my own place will go a long way toward fixing my vibe.
So I'm going to treat moving out as the primary game objective as well as the primary overall objective.

That said, it feels like I'm treading water as far as getting stuff done.

I have only a few short weeks left until the spring semester starts and right now, I'm not ready.

I'm so close to getting my own place. So close, and yet so far.

Nothing. Else. Matters.

I need to really believe that, and act accordingly.

In some ways things are worse than ever. The long-term stressors, all of which are more or less tied to being at home, keep building up. And for sure, my will to keep forcing my way forward seems much weaker than even in September, let alone last January.



On the plus side, plenty of things are, in fact, going well.

 

[Conquistador]

I'm finally getting things done. But now I need to prepare for the daunting tasks of the spring semester.

There will be a lot of challenges. But I think some parts of college will be easier than the fall was.

Most importantly, my overall mood, drive, and fighting spirit are improving. My sleep schedule this week is already better than it was for most of the fall.

I think that until the semester starts, moving out and random encounters should still be my focus game wise. Among dozens of other tasks (here, dozens is a larger number than "a million", lol), I have to cram for a chemistry placement, do the hiring paperwork for my college job, and do a bunch of other time sensitive things.

I do feel (somewhat) confident in my ability to handle things, but I'm still, as of today, struggling with promptness.

On the plus side, not moving out means I'm accumulating savings at an excellent rate. Hypothetically, if I didn't move out for two or three more years, I'd be able to afford a down payment on a house in this damned city

Unfortunately, I probably won't be transferring to U of Iowa.

 

[Conquistador]

So let's revisit the goals I set back at the beginning of the fall semester:

to form plenty of deep guy-girl friendships

Well, not plenty. I don't have "platonic abundance" yet. That said, I make positive acquaintanceships quite easily, especially with girls. Bulding those into deep friendships is another matter.

(this is going to be a recurring topic

Sort of?

and I'll share the philosophy behind putting that first later)

Another reason that l just thought of about 5 minutes ago is that successful marriages often involve couples coming to see each other as best friends.

, getting and staying with a quality girlfriend

I'm not sure I even want an LTR.

and charming people (especially females) in my business and casual interactions.

Wait, this one was actually a full success!

My overall strategy is to better leverage the college environment and my unique selling points by improving fundamentals and especially tactical skill, while developing my overall self.

Ok, sort of? I was hoping to make more progress by now.

If others' responses are any indication, I've become significantly more attractive than I used to be in the course of the past several months.

When I wrote this, I was three inches thicker around the waist, had less obvious cheekbones, was less socially aware, less wise in the ways of the world, and not quite as well-dressed, and had less polished body language, especially what they used to call "deportment".

I'm too much of a good boy to be truly Byronic

This is still true, albeit slightly less than before.

but I've been through a lot for my age.

And I've been through a whole lot more since then. My posts from around Thanksgiving indicate something of how difficult parts were.
The first five weeks were also hard, a different kind of hard, due to sleep deprivation and stuff. 9/14 was officially the "Last Hardest Day" (there were way too many as a teenager) though. And later, near the end of the month, I had fun stuff happen in one of my classes that gave me some mood swings and the longest streak in many months.
Only two of my finals were stressful, but afterwards I had a lot of excused-late assignments I had to submit. And at the end I had some issues with a girl who wanted to rope me into her breakup, which was also a little dramatic.

Posts will be hopefully less frequent and more thought out over the spring semester. Then again, things happen fast (and time flows slowly) in college, so who knows?

 

[Conquistador]

- Earlier I got number closed, gave her mine, and forgot to ask for hers, or an Insta. To be fair I was in the process of adding several guys to Discord at the time.
This is the third time (first this semester) a classmate has number closed me with interest (most girls don't have intent at that point lol) without me ever opening verbally at any point.

- I need to be better at building intimacy with classmates and social circle. I'm semi-competent at transit deep dives, but I can be hard to connect with on terms of anything approaching intimacy.

- Zombie mode Surveyor hasn't yet emerged, and probably won't for the foreseeable future. However, I've become often less present than I used to be, and not being sufficiently present leads to being uncalibrated.

That said, Surveyor is better than ever in so many ways. He's still building momentum but it appears that Punxsutawney Phil was WRONG as far as Surveyor's life and work is concerned.

Immediate operational focuses:

- Building social momentum, state, and game-specific momentum, in that order.

- Moving out. I'm maybe two weeks away from clinching it.

- Which brings us to the fact that procrastination is not hot (at least in a man -- based double standards). I plan to gradually eradicate all traces of this unhealthy habit from my character.

 

[Conquistador]

Now it becomes a matter of finding an apartment and negotiating a roommate agreement.

Still gonna follow up the "sinecure" gig for more income, but I don't have much time to spare - there's so much to get done and if I can complete the essential tasks, there are...enrichment opportunities available to a student like myself. Apart from the enrichment opportunities we discuss here, of course.

About that...I learned some new things today. In particular, I saw a masterful demonstration of a large number of seduction-applicable techniques rolled into one. I would write an OR, except for OPSEC/privacy concerns. Apart from a number of interesting micro-interactions.

Overall, things are improving. I'm getting off the ground and getting stuff done. I think everything will be all right, but it won't be easy.

I still haven't pushed retention past 2.5 but I'm cautiously optimistic.

 

[Conquistador]

So I've been thinking about what I really want, and last week, I started forming a clear intent.

Goal: Chemistry-based FB/FwB
Time frame: TBD (and I will make one once my other timetables start to clarify)
Means of achieving goal:
-Cold approach: general, and big campuses
-Actively extending SC
-Spending more time out and about, and being a little more open and friendly to strangers again
-Using retention to craft a powerful and mostly passive sexual vibe that bypasses calibration issues
-Focused, targeted improvement of social skills and game
-Upcoming transition from "lose fat" to "build muscle"
-Various other state improvements once I have my own place

 

[Conquistador]

Things are moving along OK, but efficiency and productivity are still issues, as is sleep.

Corrective action:
- No screens after 10 pm except for urgent schoolwork.
- No video games of any kind after 7 pm.
- No self-pleasuring for the remainder of the week.

On the plus side, I biked through the cold evening (in short sleeves) to Ralph Lauren and discovered that their prices are better than Macy's for the same item It was good for my momentum. I did a micro-exercise observing passersby that was interesting. Also ducked a friendly approach asking two tourists what language they were speaking (my guess would be Thai or Vietnamese or something).

It'll all be fine. The campaign continues

 

[Conquistador]

I've made significant progress in several areas, but no real breakthroughs. However, I now have significant motivation to go places in certain areas, partly due to meeting my first serious lead of the semester, whom I really like and who seems like an excellent FwB/medium-term relationship candidate.

• Finances/moving out: I've been delaying invoicing pay and stuff in order to optimize my FAFSA numbers, lol. In a few days, that should go well. No progress on apartments but one thing at a time.
• My parents' finances are likely to improve in a few months rather than at the end of the year due to unexpected events.
• SC growth: Marginal improvements. Much more in the pipeline.
• Fitness: Fat loss and other improvements continue. Medium-term improvements to skills-based fitness likely. I'm also taking a pretty rigorous PE class. Intending to plan some serious outdoor day trips soon.
• State management: Sleep is improving. Other aspects either improving (e.g. screens, drive) or likely to improve soon (focus). I managed a 4-day streak, which is progress, and also definitely improved my capacity for non-ejaculatory orgasms and general energy handling. Last night, I also did some deep hypnagogic meditation, which was relaxing and interesting.
• Academics: Main goals are trying to complete work sooner and further from deadlines, and generating the headspace and time to work on a scholarship essay contest and my pitch for UC undergrad research, the latter opportunity thanks to my mentor (who totally has a crush on me). I need to realize that not meeting these objectives will have costs.
• Overall organization etc.: ...it's early days yet lol. But I'm making measurable improvements.

Now for the game news.

Overall skills/readiness seem to be improving. I get more smiles etc. than ever before, even from females who are unavailable or not particularly appealing. I'll be doing some cold approach sets now and then, in addition to extending SC.

For OPSEC all I'll say here about the girl I mentioned above is that she's international (fresh off the plane but not a party/club type -- thus potentially open to FwB setups), has a cute accent, mannerisms, etc., has a face and body that meets my standards, and seems outdoorsy (more in a national park way than a trail-running way), sweet, relatively inexperienced, and somewhat attracted to me.
I didn't talk to her at all on day one (not ideal but I wasn't doing well). This class, we worked together on the day's major objective. I broke the touch barrier effectively (even got her to shoulder-tap me back), and asked some basic get-to-know-you questions. Our brief (timed) conversations in between rounds induced her to do the cute maidenly hand-on-decolletage thing while I wasn't looking.
So far so good but there's a long way to go.
There's some male competition in the class which mustn't be underestimated (I saw someone number closing her as I was leaving). However, I think I have a lot of advantages over them. And surprisingly, I have significant social proof (even though this isn't a book class), which I can build over time.
I've learned a LOT from past experiences (and mistakes) and am pretty confident I can do much better than previously. Making her mine won't be a walk in the park (altho a walk in the hills might be involved at some point). But I think I have a pretty good shot.
No, @mist , I'm not getting one-itis. There are plenty of girls out there like her (I know bc I've met a few). But you don't meet them every day -- more like every month (or every few weeks if you're lucky).

 

[mist]

No, @mist , I'm not getting one-itis. There are plenty of girls out there like her (I know bc I've met a few). But you don't meet them every day -- more like every month (or every few weeks if you're lucky).

 

[Conquistador]

Goal: Improve voice
Means: Self-directed training
Time Frame: However long it takes to be satisfactory.
I intend to set times to work on it, but I'm still sorting out a lot of organizational stuff and I'm on deadlines.

 

[Conquistador]

I have a stressful and jam-packed few days ahead.
Tbh I’m starting to doubt my ability to take on the additional academic objectives that need to be done in the next few days, but I feel they’re necessary if I want to have my pick of top transfer destinations.
As far as moving out, I’m back to square one, albeit with substantial cash reserves and 1k/mo income.
I did a quick opportunistic cold approach today while getting off the bus, but failed to hook.
I have three viable leads in class, but right now I’m not operating in the “lion mode” that I intend to eventually move toward. Because while my physical drive and self-measured performance is more powerful than ever (getting hard on the aforementioned approach even though I had blown four times in less than 36 hours), the most pressing needs are emotional. And that makes things complicated.
I’m continuing to improve the sticking points in my game though.

 

[sunnygirl]

You've got this @Surveyor look how far you've come since the beginning of your journaling. I can see more lucid and clarity in your thoughts and I know you're going to keep sticking to the game!! Keep your eyes on the prize! I've enjoyed reading all eight pages of your journey thus far, wow what a ride, but all worth it!
Keep us updated on your progress and everything.