I'll be honest, when I first learned about being PUA a few weeks ago, I thought it was weird. Even today, when I signed up for this forum, my mind hadn't been changed, but I've read through some of these posts and the ideas and all I can say is 'damn'. I just want to take a minute to type out, and explain my feelings towards all of this, and I think the best way may be through a realization I came to while reading and exploring this page. So here it is.
I like to think I've never had any problems with girls, and the last couple years of my life, I can truthfully say I haven't. Yes, some may even call me cocky at times--but I really don't want to come off that way--I have just gained a confidence that many would be jealous of. I can also tell you, it was not always this way. Although I have just found out about what PUA is recently, I want to say that picking up girls and simply being able to talk with girls has changed my life. Growing up, I was always the one in the back off the crowd when it came to girls. Okay...when it came to everyone. I wasn't the guy who everyone knew, and to make it worse, all of my friends were the ones everyone knew. It always killed me to watch all my buddies go into a crowd, everyone knowing their names, everyone simply mushing over them. I even remember one of my buddies, at 15, meeting a beautiful 21 year old who just couldn't get enough of him; on the plus side she did buy us booze (hopefully that doesn't count as illegal activity, I did read the forum rules I promise!).
I had serious social issues. Something about being on the cusp of being popular, of being able to talk with people just wrecked me. Behind closed doors, with my friends, I was the life of the party, but an upper classman would walk-in, a parent, or anything with a vag, and good ol' Tim would shut down. I never thought being liked could ever be attained through practice, or through just putting yourself out there. I thought it was something that people just 'had' and were born with.
No, I didn't understand want PUA was until a couple weeks ago, but as a kid I remember waking up one day and deciding screw it, i'm going all in, that's what did it for me saying screw it. Ironically enough...if you know what I'm saying .
In all seriousness, I remember sitting at the volleyball court when I spotted a group of beautiful ladies tanning on the dock. Ignoring my friends excuses on going up to them, I went up solo, and with all my courage I asked "Hey, do you want to go play volleyball?" To my shock, they said yes! I remember a weight getting lifted off my shoulders--it was liberating to say the least. From that point on, I didn't care. Okay, I had a few more scary moments, and even to this day I get a little nervous, but I'm not lying when I say I will go up to any girl, any time, and say anything (not recommended once your friends realize your drunk and actually will follow through with that). After I gained this skillif you can call it that, my friends always had excuses for approaching girls the way I did.
Me: "Hey guys, those girls are cute, I'm going to say hi...who else is in?"
Friend: "Nah man, that ones not that good looking." (When she's actually a Norwegian model--true story)
Friend: "I would, but you know I kind of have a thing with Jacqueline.It would feel wrong."
Friend: "Dude! I'll go but, what's the plan? What will I say? What will you say? We need a reason to go over there!"
I had no idea what I was doing, and to be entirely honest, if I knew that this whole PUA thing existed back then, it probably would have saved me a few blunders, but you know what? I still cherish those blunders. I think that it was the absolute, drop-dead on the spot, most embarrassing blunders that got me to where I am today. For example, approaching a girl who I thought was alone and was seeming to flirt with me, until her 250 pure muscle boyfriend came up--and I tried to talk my way out of it.
PUA is so much more than getting chicks, it's about overcoming social anxiety, it's about not being the guy in the back of the room watching everyone else, it's about feeling good about yourself, about not just girls, but meeting people and holding conversations, and it's about just putting yourself out there.
I've talked with a few of you guys online now, and I want to thank the whole site and everything about it. I know a lot of you talk about getting dirty, landing the pootie-tang, and being experts, but even where I am now--I'm not an expert. Meeting people and being able to talk with anyone, anytime is a skill that I don't think you can ever master, and that's a good thing.
I know I wouldn't be where I am today without overcoming social anxiety, and just letting myself get out there and meet people. It has even helped me multiple times in the business world and I even attribute it to learning Chinese (if you were wondering knowing Chinese is the best skill to have as a white guy in China). I think this post could have gone anywhere on the site, but considering this is an introduction page, I wanted to re-introduce myself to you: I'm Tim Michaels and I respect the hell out of what PUA does for people. It truly is life changing.

Thank you for your post. In all fairness it is still a little weird though.

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Been around the world twice, Talked to everyone once...

Haha I agree bro. Let's see if I can advance the weirdness one more level by telling a personal story about one of my endeavors.

Right after high school, I got a call from this long lost relative who lives in China. I had only seen her one in my life prior to that, so it was pretty weird when I started Skyping her, especially right after I graduated. Long story short, I ended up going to live in China for two years, by myself, in a rural Chinese southern town in the middle of no-where, without knowing the language. The first bar I ever went to, I was instantly swarmed with Chinese girls. I mean so god damn many that I couldn't even walk to the bar to order a drink without forcefully pushing my way through. This actually, I soon found out, didn't matter, because even all the Chinese guys in the bar wanted to buy me shots, and were shoving beer in my face, so buying anything was off the table for me (Chinese love a good white guy in a rural town). I realized very quickly, that picking one girl out of the group, between a shit ton of girls and guys wanting to talk to me, was going to be really difficult. Luckily for me, when I walked out of the bar after I had gotten worn out by my instant celebrity status, a girl approached me who knew more English than any of the others. Granted, she still barely spoke a word, but it was just enough for us to share some laughs and just enough for her to invite me to some late night, post-bar, food. Even luckier, she said she learned most of her English from doing modeling in Shanghai and having foreign friends. After dinner, in which we burned a bunch of small fish to death in a boiling pot of water and ate them still twitching, we went back to my place.

It was all pretty normal as we walked in the door. I turned on a dvd that I had claimed was one of my favorite American movies she HAD to see. Obviously, the movie didn't mean shit, because within seconds we were making out on my couch, clothes coming off, the basics. We went upstairs and it began getting to that time so I pulled out a condom. To my surprise, she shook her head repeatedly and kept saying "no." I didn't completely understand, I thought maybe she was allergic to the latex or something, but she kept getting more passionate, so once again, I pulled out the condom. Once again she said no, and actually grabbed the condom and threw it away. Although it took nearly everything I had, I stopped and asked her why she kept throwing away the damn condom...I even looked up the word allergy in my translator to see.
She grabbed my translator and looked up the word "baby."
I was pretty drunk when I saw it, and to add to it, I was pretty out of it from eating a pile of things that I had never seen before in my life--but seeing the word "baby" freaked me out to say the least. Still to this day I have no idea if that's actually what she meant, and if she wanted to have my child, but i'll never find out because I made her leave. Still to this day every time I say 离开 (li kai) or leave...I think of the the first crazy ass model and my first night at the bars in that southern Chinese city.

I was going to tell you about the girl who took a shit in the middle of the road, but it's something I have to build up to.