Comments always appreciated.
I get terrible approach anxiety during the day, but never at bars.

I decided to make some approaches today in an effort to get over it. I went to the mall and opened times, and none of them went that well, but none terrible. I thought I'd post them today so people can perhaps learn from it.

Approach 1
In Express. This cute brunette (age 26-30, I'm 21 btw) was looking at Men's shorts so I opened:

Cr: Those look a little big for you
HB: Haha oh you think?
Cr: Maybe you could cut them in half and have two skirts.
HB: Haha yea, or a shirt or something.
Cr: Could be could be... shopping for a boyfriend?
HB: No actually... my husband. (smiling)
Cr: Oh... uh well...
GAME OVER

Hey I couldn't have expected it to go much better if she was married. I should def practice a response to that. Plus, since this is all about practice, I should have just kept going to see how far we could take things.

I failed to neg her, I failed to DHV. I wasn't focused on my body language or anything, but she smiled and seemed responsive.

Approach 2
In Urban Outfitters. I saw a cute girl who wasn't dressed up at all. She was wearing a long sleeve shirt with the name of a cross country race on it. I opened saying I was looking for something for my (fictional) sister, and pointed out a sweater that was nice. She asked some questions about my sister, her age, her style, etc. I might have given things away here, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, I shifted our conversation over to her shirt. Asked her if she was a runner.

Cr: So are you a serious runner?
HB: Kinda... I ran a half marathon in SD last week
Cr: Wow, that's national. My roommate is on CU's X-Country team.
HB: Cool cool...
Cr: So how long have you been running competitively?
HB: About a year
Cr: Wow nice.
HB: Yeah it keeps me out of trouble. Well it was nice to--
Cr: You need that much help staying out of trouble?
HB: Hahaha.... bye, [walks off]

So, not a total failure. But nothing productive came from it. On this approach I made two big misakes.

1. I telegraphed interest, by asking her all those questions. I should have acted less interested, or at least less impressed. I skipped A and went to Comfort.

2. The only cocky/funny line I pulled was after she'd decided I was boring. I definitely should have tried to take it a step further, but before that I needed to be cocky before hand.

I failed to neg her, I failed to DHV.

Approach 3
There were two girls behind me on the escalator. As we stepped off, I opened with Jealous GF. As I looked at the set, I noticed one girl seemed to be 30, and one seemed to be 16-19. I was confused as shit, since one was dark skin latino and the other was super white, so not family. No fuckin idea. ANYWAY.

The younger one wanted to talk to me about it. She was chatty, I finally succeeded in dropping a neg on a girl today, saying her shirt was nice and that I'd been seeing it all over.

The older one crossed her arms and stared at me with a "you're just hitting on us" look. I tried to bring her into the convo but to no avail. The whole thing made me way uncomfortable so I ejected. Weird set.

Anyway, in this set I did DHV a little, but I didn't really have a target. I was thrown off by the age difference and everything else. I'd say this was my best set.

Conclusion

I need to lead the conversation more. I need to DHV before I give the girls a chance to leave. And I definately need to throw negs earlier on. DHV and negs must be my focus area.

I'm glad I got out a little and worked on my daytime AA. I'm sure it will improve once I start having a little success.

I also need to pay attention to the 3 second rule. I passed up at least 5 great opportunities to open because I hesitated.