username17

Two week mark for me. Woohoo! I find my mind wandering to games. But I quickly re-focus myself on whatever task I was doing and move on.

I had a fairly underwhelming weekend. As soon as I got off work Wednesday morning at 9am I didn't have the energy to work on my house. I did W1D1 C25K, Day 1 of 30 Yoga with Adrienne, 10 minutes of headspace, and I read some. So I did some positive things for myself. And I didn't play video games. But I didn't quite get done what I wanted. The next day I woke up at 7:30 determined to work on the house. I did a 2nd day of C25K, Yoga, etc. But around 10am I just went back to sleep. The rest of my weekend was pretty much sedentary and wasteful. So I'm not too happy with myself. But I've picked myself back up and I'm starting where I left off with C25k, Yoga, headspace, reading, etc. I guess my ego didn't expect me to fail. Or fail so quickly. But I've picked myself back up and I'm keeping on. Note: I am keeping a personal journal on my PC using RedNotebook. So while I'm not posting here as much I am still tracking my progression.

Week 1 is down. Starting on Week 2. I'm starting to miss playing video games. Certain things I hear other people taking about or read online trigger the memories of all the good times I had playing. But I'm quick to remind myself of my goals in life. One of which is to complete the 90 day detox. My co-worker is heavy into gaming and that's pretty much all he talks about. I try to entertain the conversation but not think too much about it. I brought up some more active hobbies we might both be interested in instead of gaming. But I have a feeling things might grow apart with us now that I don't having gaming in common with him. We'll see. Edit: I forgot to mention that I've been doing a lot of reading as well. My goal is 1 book a week for now. Right now I'm reading the Dresden files for the fun of it. But once I get more adjusted to reading I'll start integrating some of the more instructional books I have like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence, 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, etc. I think I've tried to read the Zen book 3 times now but I always let gaming get in the way. Hoping 4th time will be the charm. I initially was splitting the reading up into pomodoro's so I could take a break as needed. But lately I can read for an hour or two with no problem at all. One of my goals was to finish books on my booklist and add more too it. Hopefully I can really get into reading and can start to knock out some of these books that have been on my list for 6+ months.

Thanks Cam. And thanks @Revit Good point. Gaming is always accessible. Even via browser games. It's the decision to stop gaming and do something more valuable with my time that matters.

@Revit Yeah I'm already running Linux (Xubuntu) on my gaming this PC. But this GTX970 is screaming to be used. I've heard about using the GPU instead of the CPU for Bitcoin mining. So I might get into that. Not sure yet.

Code Academy is what I've used in the past. I'll be starting over from scratch there as well. There's a Learn Python the hard way PDF out there which is good. Also, Google released some of their training in Python as well. https://developers.google.com/edu/python/set-up

So I've decided to try and sell off some of the stuff I don't need anymore (Monitor Stand, HOTAS Joystick, TrackIR, Extra monitors, etc) over the next few months. At the end of my 90 Detox I'll purchase a laptop as a reward for myself and stop using the gaming PC. A condition of the new laptop will also be that I used the next 90 days to learn a new skill or master a known one that would help with the advancement of my Career. In the past I've attempted to learn Python twice but failed. I think I might be more successful this time without the constant distraction of gaming. We'll see.

Welp I survived my 1st weekend. Keep in mind I have 3 day weekends because of my schedule. I leave work Wednesday morning at 9am and don't return until 9pm Saturday night. I've had this schedule for years but I'm thinking I might need to switch to Days. It's hard to go outside and work on the house at 3am. I still have a ton of things on my to-do list to keep me busy. I'm also revisiting past hobbies that I enjoyed (Billiards and Yo-yo) and considering some of the ideas on the Hobby Ideas PDF to try out.

Yeah I probably wouldn't be able to sell the PC itself. But I have a $300 4+1 monitor stand and like 5 monitors sitting around. I think I'd like to sell all but the main monitor (144hz 24") and get a laptop. I'm a Linux sysadmin so I don't need anything too fancy graphics wise. I just need something that can power 2 monitors, has some decent RAM, and CPU. My computer at home is overkill if it's not being used for gaming. I was thinking of burning some CPU time with SETI@Home, splitting proteins, or mining for bitcoins. But in all honestly I'd rather take it all down and have a simple laptop + monitor on my desk.

Yeah. My hope is that I never go back to gaming in that way. My goal is to have replaced all the things I used to seek in Gaming with things in real life by the time my 90 day Detox is over. I think I can sell my 3 monitor stand to a co-worker. The monitors will go up on craigslist and the PC I'd probably keep but have it powered off/disconnected. Might give it to my Sister who is into gaming but isn't hooked like I was.

Right now I have a pretty beefy desktop with Triple monitors. It SCREAMS gaming. Seems kind of like a waste of a PC if it's not being used for Gaming. I'm contemplating selling off what I can and buying a Laptop instead. I understand that anything, even my Smartphone, can be used for gaming. But from a point of minimalism, frugal-ness, and space saving I think I might want to switch to a Laptop instead. Has anyone done this? Any thoughts? Note: My entire career and livelihood is built on computers/the internet. So I cannot go without a computer or the internet. That is not an option.

Welp day 4 is here. No gaming so far. This home improvement project of painting the eaves is going to be a lot bigger job than I thought. My house isn't big at all but it's OLD (~100 years) so it's got that many years of paint on it. I spent all afternoon yesterday and only got one side of the house done. In my resting hours last night I setup Linux on my Gaming PC so right now I don't have a single device with a game on it. I got another side of the house/eaves done. Also did some yard work. Tomorrow I think I'm gonna take a break from it and go to the Botanical garden. I wanna watch the new Divergent movie too.

+1 to Elliot Hulse. I've been a long time subscriber to him. I'm no body builder so that side of him doesn't interest me but he has a lot of really good things to day.

Hey Kad, I'm only on Day 3 of my Detox so this might not be the best advice, but you can login to the Steam website and chat with your friends from there. The web chat isn't quite as good as the Steam client. But if you uninstall Steam and use the web interface the games in your Library aren't 'just a click away' from installation like in the full Steam client. It might be a good intermediary step so you can get 1 step further away from your games but not 1 step further away from your friends. GL and thanks for your post.

Yeah I downloaded the PDF. Lots of good ideas. I don't think I'll have too many issues using some of the suggestions in the Acting, Resting, and Achievement categories. But I have a lot of anxiety about social settings so some of the things I've been wanting to do (Yoga in a studio, Aikido, etc) have been dropped. Public speaking would be torture at this point in my life. There's is a Linux/UNIX User Group in my area which I want to start attending again. There's little to no anxiety there because it's just me and a bunch of other nerds. Maybe I can use that to break out of my shell and then shoot for something a little bit more out of my comfort zone. As far as what I'm doing this weekend I only have one thing really planned so far. I need to paint the eaves of my house. I recently had a new roof put on my house. A lot of the wood was replaced (old house, planks. Not plywood) so it really stands out. That's been on my to-do list for a long time. Even from before I got the roof replaced. So that's my first goal for the weekend. That'll probably only take a day though. I'll have to think up some other things to do for day 2 and 3. There's a Botanical garden with walking/running trails near my house. I initially planned to do all my running/walking in front of netflix on a treadmill. But quitting gaming just to start watching TV in it's stead isn't shooting as high as I'd like to shoot. So I'm thinking of getting a membership there. It'll be something that will get me out of the house, it's a beautiful area,it'll get some sun in me (I'm quite pale), and it's a more inspiring form of exercise (in my opinion) compared to treadmilling in a room with a TV. The suggestion to get a part time job was especially good. Although in all honestly I'd rather volunteer on my weekends then get a 2nd job. I'm signed up on volunteermatch.org but never really got any hits. I may have to be more aggressive about finding volunteer opportunities if I do end up with too much free time on my weekends. I'll see how it goes.