JTBL #14 – Warning: Avoid Injury When Hitting The Wall On Your Self-improvement Marathon

-These Croatian women, man, they’re like princesses. The Macedonian proclaimed loudly, with a strong sense of alpha-status.

-Yeah I know, I nodded with a dreamy look. They’re pretty awesome.

-They think they’re like special or something. You can’t even fuck them on the first date!

I realized we weren’t talking about the same thing. My smile faded into a half concern, half saddened gaze. I listened to this man’s rant. About the wrongfulness of the women around these parts. About how they want to be treated like people and taken on dates and stuff.

Imagine that. To be treated like a person. How rude and delusional they must be to demand such high maintenance luxury.

To be fair, I sympathize with this guy. It’s easy to fall into this tunnel-vision trap and only see the problem completely one-sidedly. The issue arises from creeps approaching women, because sane people don’t bother, because of embarrassment, peer pressure, judging and validation. Then women put up huge bitch-shields to keep idiots away. Which leads to two things:

1. Only macho bullshit gets through. Only the huge body builder gorillamen with the charm of a barn door get women, because they don’t take no for an answer.

2. People think sex is a reward for giving gifts. Which leads to people objectifying women and attempting to give time, money, and power for sex.

Which both lead to the perception of beautiful women acting as princesses.

Curiously enough, if you treat women as individual persons, they’ll treat you as an individual person. And all of this social conditioning disappears immediately.

I didn’t tell the man about this. He had enough to rant about.

Admit it, you’ve dreamed of flying around the world looking for adventures. Passive income, without a care in the world. Sitting in the sunshine, working on your macbook? Well, here’s Jay exploring Europe like a brave soul, right? Glamorous and adventurous, meeting new people, exploring new places. Let me tell you, it’s not always like that. See, the thing about going outside your comfort zone to look for success is that it’s damn uncomfortable. Even scary at times. I’ve been in Zagreb for two weeks and while there’s been women, Tinder-experiments, and business building, I’m feeling weary. Homesickness, maybe? Home to where? I have no idea.. But weary.

Marathon runners speak of hitting the wall. I feel like that – I’m out of battery power and can’t find a place to recharge. Which lead to being bed-ridden ill for three days. Next to the allergy, travelling and the insect bites.. it was the loneliest I’ve felt in months. I had no place to stay, no real income to speak of, and an illness that was practically impairing my mobility. In a city totally alien to me, with people speaking a language I knew nothing about. For a moment there, I felt kinda scared. I mean sure, my lovely little brunette-friend was there to watch Seinfeld with me, but she had no idea. It wasn’t her worry.

So now I’m living in a VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER!

Nah, actually I pulled through. I’m still feeling the effects of the flu or whatever crap disease it was, but I found a little apartment with a local roommate, which shall serve as my base of operations for the immediate future. Some of you guys may think your experiences with roommates have been iffy, but I promise you, I’ve had worse. I’ve had the misfortune of ending up with some of the worst roommates in known history. Thankfully my fears were unfounded, as this 23-year old architect student seems to be cool and harmless. We get along fine.

For now.

This girl by the way, and I know she reads this, has the happiest pair of eyes. She’s pretty important to me.

Follows a boring status update for my own records. Skip at your own accord.

Guestblogging is finally reaching that stage where I can start pitching my ideas to bigger blogs and make guest posts that’ll drive traffic to my own site. I’m planning to guest post like a machine in the next few months. It’ll put Rat Race Maverick on the map! Related to that is copywriting, that thing where you persuade people to have a look at your product, which is gonna be my immediate cashflow. Copywriting is all about making a product presentable to a particular audience. To try out this mindset, I made myself presentable through a Tinder-experiment. And while it was kinda cool to immerse myself in quick self-promotion, it also made the program seem even more fake and tasteless.

..and while that’s all very exciting, I keep returning to procrastination. It’s like I can’t handle all this change, and my body is telling me to just shove it and just rather stare at Youtube. Like I don’t deserve to succeed. It’s a fucked up little feeling at the back of my head that’s trying to keep me from making it. Like my inner Finnish boy telling me to just give up and stop pretending, because after all, I’m a just a big loser. Damn hard to keep that voice at bay. It makes me lose concentration and motivation. There’s a thing called impostor syndrome. I’m feeling it heavily.

Here’s Ellen Bard with a brilliant article about that particular issue.

 

“You’re 30. Why don’t you have a girlfriend?” She asked quietly, slightly accusingly, with a worried tone. She was probably just trying to understand my take on life and what exactly was wrong with me for not having a stable relationship.

This was not the kind of pillow talk I was hoping for.

I told her the truth: I don’t believe in girlfriends in the classic sense, as it doesn’t feel natural to me. I explained my stance on polyamory and that monogamous relationships in my world are akin to chaining people from their freedom. She laughed nervously, seemingly frustrated that I so blatantly wouldn’t look for validation from her.

I got the sense that she didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin. I felt mistrust, negative energy, and a hungry ego that needed validation. The sort of company I could do without.

Flashback nearly 3 months ago:

Miami International, central wifi area, Terminal J. Some black dude was blasting some horrible burger-pop from his iphone on loud volume, so I moved outside. Besides, I wanted to take in as much Miami air as I could before returning to the home continent. There was a small clearing next to the terminal, seemed like a designated smoking area. I had time to kill so I sat down and took my laptop out.

Scanning the perimeter, as any seasoned security guard would, I noticed some poor soul sleeping on the bench and another feeding birds. No immediate threat though, and with other passengers having a smoke, I took out my laptop and started my daily writing. I tried getting a signal on the wifi, but it was one of those 600 dollars / 30 minute-deals and I wasn’t feeling it. So I just did some freewriting.

I hadn’t gotten two paragraphs down when the woman feeding the birds took notice of me. I saw her strolling towards my immediate position and got ready for my weirdo-defense. Like for fuck’s sake not now I just wanna sit in peace for a second.

My defensive bitch face soon melted into compassion. It’s funny how some people have honestly run into some bad luck.

This lady had fallen, broken her rib and missed her flight earlier that week, and couldn’t get back to the Netherlands because of that. She had run out of cash at the hospital and couldn’t reach her friends at home. She wanted to use my laptop for e-mail. I tried to listen for signs of deception to see if I was getting cheated here, but she showed me the bandages and sounded honestly distressed and tired. I realized this woman had honestly just run into some shitty luck. I had no wifi, so I couldn’t help with that, but I offered to pay for her call if she could do it at the info desk or something. Then something sparked a light behind this tired old lady’s eyes. She realized she could call collect to her friend who could wire her money. She wouldn’t take my money and promised me she’d be okay.

She reminded me of that lady in Mary Poppins feeding the birds. Feed the birds, tuppence a bag..

Some of you have been wondering what happened to the lovely girl from Graz. Well, she told me she didn’t feel it. Wasn’t REALLY a surprise, but what a bummer, man. Not because of the sex, nah. I didn’t think we had too much chemistry either, and she wasn’t too much in touch with her sexuality. But it’d be a damn shame not to see her again. She was weird. I like weird people. And wickedly intelligent as well. It’s up to her though. There’s absolutely nothing more I can do about that. Besides, I came to Zagreb to meet incredible women on the streets.

Let’s get back to Josipa Jelacica Trg, present day. I see this guy chatting up some girls. Awesome. Wish I’d be in that mood. Chatting up girls on the marketplace, oh making them laugh. Yeah that’d be so cool.. oh they’re pushing him off? No wait, that’s not a chat up attempt. I wonder .. oh shit now he’s coming over. He looks so cool be chill.

Then this guy comes over and opens his mouth. “Do you love animals?” he blurted out too quickly in a hilariously high pitched voice completely unsuited for the image he was portraying. Struck by the apparent fakeness of the display, I felt the need to be a snarky asshole.

“Only on weekdays” I answered, almost patting myself on the back for my cleverness.

“Wot” he said bluntly with a blank face, completely missing my attempt at humour.

Something about this dude was unbelievably annoying. “It was a joke.”

“Oh, I do not speak English that well”

Well, of course you don’t, you clodplate.

This guy was seriously boring me. “So what do you want?” He wanted 2€ for homeless cats. I don’t give money to beggars, and this guy didn’t really seem much different, so the cats remain homeless.

Applying Liam McRae’s advice about speaking slowly and leaving pauses between answers, I met three women on the street. And they were all gorgeous.

And I left them all smiling.

-Jay