Smiling More

 Recently I’ve been smiling more. On purpose. For a long time my smile felt really unnatural to me, but when I got married I had to basically smile for about a whole hour while the photos were being taken. It still felt unnatural, but when the photos came back I realised that they looked ok. I saw on a television programme a while back the guy who was in the house of lords, with the curly hair, who did that BBC show on the human body. Anyway he said that most people can’t consciously tell the difference between a forced smile and a real one. Case in point.

 I also read something by leil lowndes on about smiling when you walk into a room, so that everyone can tell that you’re somebody. Recently I’ve been doing this, forcing a smile as I walk into a room. Especially when I go out for a coffee. I’m getting some good responses from people. Smiles anyway. But how do I tell if they are forced smiles?

I’m feeling a little off.

I’m feeling a little off today. Having a low day. A slow one. I can’t really think why.

Okay, so I’m trying to get into the habit of being social, so I’ve been walking to work. Where I live means that’s about an hour walk, and I go past a hospital, so there are a few people that go the opposite way as I go past. Anyway I try to smile and say hi to people, but today I was just having an off day. I’d smile, but I’d feel that my eyes weren’t smiling, and it didn’t feel right. I would go and make eye contact with someone, but not be able to keep the smile, or I’d be able to smile, but would forget to keep eye contact, and I’d look and feel shifty.

Does anyone else have an off day?

Girls and Guys

I’ve been thinking about the difference between girls and guys. Aside from the obvious I mean. From my perspective, A guy can never really be friends with a girl, either he likes her, and wants to get into her pants, or he really isn’t interested. It’s a strange thing how guys are always stereotyped as being interested in one thing, but I tend to think that’s ok.

So the other night I went out to a party with my wife, it was the Saturday before Guy Fawkes, and so there was fireworks, and a bunch of people were invited over to celebrate at a friend of mine’s. Anyway this guy works in a call centre, so he knows a bunch of women. Great angle if you use it, but he doesn’t. Anyway for as long as I can remember I’ve been interested in interaction with other people, especially how some guys seem to get all the girls. So I try to figure out what it is that these guys do, and do it myself. I do this when I’m out at a party, particularly if I don’t know a bunch of people there. This is what I think about a great majority of the time.

Anyway the bread and butter of my routine right now is getting me into interactions with women, you have to start somewhere right? so about for the last year I’ve been trying to get over what some people call approach anxiety. I was living in Wellington where the public transport is really good, and so some days when I had some courage, I’d sit next to a hot chick (or any chick), and try to get myself to start a conversation. This gets easier I promise. I’m not 100%, but I don’t feel like I want to puke when I talk to a strange woman any more. In fact it’s a real buzz when you have a great interaction with a woman.

I’m pretty sure women don’t think about things like this so much, so I guess that’s another difference between guys and girls.