HELP, tips about where to go after the opener are very needed and appreciated!

I went out on Friday night to finally meet up with a couple of PUAs here in Helsinki. It was so cool to meet guys who are doing this too and who know the material. Although, I must say I actually think I know more PUA material and routines than they do, but more on a theoretical level, and I am willing to admit that it's not worth much if you don't go out into the field and try it out, and these guys definitely do go out sarging more than I do. So I'm glad to have now met them, maybe they'll push me to push myself more in the field.

These guys’ game was much more direct and day-game based than mine, and I’m not sure what I think of that. It just doesn’t seem all that rejection-proof to just stop someone on the street in the middle of the day and tell them that they seem interesting. And they said that most of the women they approach are alone so single sets. Seems totally counter to Mystery’s and Style’s teachings, which are what I’ve mostly been studying. One of the guys had been to a day-game bootcamp in Amsterdam, so that had probably influenced him a lot. I didn’t know the PUA who had trained him, wasn’t a big name. But so yeah, I’m using canned material, BUT I am coming up with some of my own, too.

I still struggle with going beyond the opener. I feel like I’ve been able to get past the worst of my AA (even though of course, it still plagues me a lot), so I can and do open many sets. What I struggle with is what to do after that. I know on a theoretical level that I should neg them and DHV, but in the moment, my mind just blanks and I can’t think of other things to say than to stretch out the opener thread until there’s nothing more to say. I feel like they might even be hooked and seem like they might want to talk to me more, but unless I come up with something riveting and interesting to say at that point, the conversation just runs dry.

Like for example, a week or so ago, I opened this one two-set, and they were totally into the opener (a light non-situational one I came up with myself) and I even got a bit beyond that, and accidentally managed to DHV by mentioning that I’ve been teaching myself some coding lately, and surprisingly, they were totally interested in that subject, but I didn’t have anything to stack after that topic, so I just ran out of things to say, and I had to resort to my all-purpose closer of “I have to go rejoin my friends, but it was a pleasure meeting you.” This sort of thing has now happened to me many times, but I felt especially crappy after that one because even though I had done well up until that point, I could see that I could’ve done SO much more and gotten further, but instead I froze up and ejected too early.

What do you guys do after the opener, what’s the immediate next step before a longer, rapport- or comfort-building routine? What do you do if your mind goes blank and you run out of things to say?