| I've met brilliant 30+ year olds who were still on the 8 year old level you describe. You need to adjust your value system until you don't feel like you've been wasting time by working on yourself rather than your software project. Be prepared for horrible failures in the same fashion that you expect segfaults the first few hundred times you code in assembly. Segfaults wouldn't shake your confidence, neither should a girl who is either not interested or openly annoyed by you. Take a lot more risk and be prepared to fail hard and make a total moron out of yourself. You will still feel better than just cocooning yourself. Listen. Don't judge the cool, preppy, jock, whatever guys, observe what they do and how they talk, dress, etc. You're not trying to be like them, but you're just learning like you are when you are reading source code or reference manuals. Do not intellectually dominate. You will draw attention to yourself and lose all the opportunity to learn. Observe other people's sense of humor. Is yours too confined to stuff only the reddit crowd would laugh at? Read bullshit magazines like Maxim. There is so much crap in there, but there's some truth too and they are very direct about it. Ideally, try to get a good friend who is a girl and not a geek. Forget about ever hooking up with this girl, she is there just to give you feedback on how you look like when you say or do some things and how your appearance/dress affects others. If you have a sister/cousin, even better, ask for feedback. |