Hey everyone, Pulse here 👋
I have seen a few of Cam's videos on YouTube, and read some posts from StopGaming over the last couple of years, and I've set myself a deadline of getting rid of all remnants of gaming (essentially a media blackout) to be 1st January 2026. It's a long process as I have YouTube accounts I'll need to clear out (or just make a new main YouTube account), Chrome accounts I need to clean out (or again, create a new one), sites to block, game accounts to close or sell, etc.
I do also play a game a little bit on the weekend; as it's a live service game, its end of life is now, but there are a couple of things I wanted to complete before closing the book entirely on gaming - so instead of spending maybe 14 hours per week playing (a couple of hours per night) since a couple of weeks ago, I'm now spending 2 hours per week playing, which is a lot better, but by 1st January 2026 I want it down to 0 hours, permanently. (Hopefully it's okay if I journal even though I still play games a little bit temporarily, but if the mods would rather I wait until I'm at 0 hours 1st January, I don't mind that as well, as I understand you might only want people journaling and discussing that are focused on no gaming at all) Update: Thinking about it, let's just cut it out completely now. Why wait? There's no point of completing anything else. Day 0 starts today. Let's go 👍
However, I thought I'd start a journal now and get into the habit of journaling so that I can be around more like-minded people (as the rest of the internet that isn't self-improvement-based seems too anti-gamequitting, anti-pornquitting, etc. etc.).
Admittedly, I need to reduce all time spent on my computer, but I'm thinking one thing at a time, and the low hanging fruit is completely quitting games as I'm basically almost there anyway.
I'm a slightly older quitter, having started things like NoFap back in ~2011 or so (I'm early 30s now, the average age range seems to be early teens to late twenties) and managing to be in complete control, which is something that was initially very difficult, but more-or-less saved my life. So with quitting games I'm not necessarily looking for anything that extreme, but having those extra hours in the day back and having a clearer conscience I think will really improve my life.
I have my doubts about certain things (like getting back into dating again), but I know that hey, even if I fail at dating and need to take a break from it for a while, I'd much rather not go back to playing games and just do something much more fulfilling with my time (like getting better at dating so I don't fail as much 😂) It feels like gaming is life with training wheels, but eventually those wheels become a crutch/excuse rather than an assistance.
It's not so much I have an issue with playing 16 hours per day - although I used to when I was younger, but luckily I naturally became more bored with games and played them a lot less due to needing to spend more time on productive things e.g. studies, work, relationships, etc. - but it's completely cutting out ALL gaming-related media and not spending that hour or two I have per day either playing a game or watching one.
I have some topics I'd like to share with the forum in my journal, and hopefully get some discussions going on them. I'll also take some ideas from the existing journal templates and apply some of the subheadings to my own journal, specifically the goal-setting.
I still also need to set up a badge on the StopGaming subreddit.
I will also try my best to read at least one or two other journal entries per day and interact with others.
Thanks for reading, speak soon 👍
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Pulse · Posted
