giblets

05 July 17 Game Free: 80 (17 Apr) On the home stretch now, in the 80s. Delayed my entry today as I am unwell - as I predicted, I have caught the virus/flu that my family had and now I am home sick. I initially thought of it as a great opportunity to work on some projects around the house, but I don't have the energy, so I will do as the doctor ordered and stay in bed. I am at least going to get the dinner ready early so everyone can relax when they get home, so I will achieve something. Yesterday's experiment without my phone went really well. I didn't get as much work completed as I wanted to, but I was focused and I felt accomplished afterwards. I think the new notebook is helping a lot too as I can shuffle around what I need to do and focus on the higher priority, or easiest ones first to get momentum. A few things I found was a bit harder without my phone though, mainly my to do list, and several times I had to call someone and didn't know their number. I could overcome that by carrying a small notebook, which is what I used to do. Even if I only leave my phone at home for half of the day, I think in the long run I am going to see some productivity gains; which is great because that is exactly what I need right now. Still feeling a bit hesitant to tell people what I am doing here, and I don't know why. A few mates do keep asking me to play games, but I think they are starting to give up, but I find myself only checking the site or working on my personal development behind closed doors. It should not be a problem so obviously I have a few insecurities there that I need to overcome. I feel as if it may be due to the Australian "tall poppy syndrome" or not wanting to break the mold, but it would be niave of me to blame it completely on external factors. I'd like to meet up with someone who hasn't seen me since I stopped gaming and started this journal and see if they think there is any noticable difference. Maybe that will help me be more open about my development.

After having a good chat with Cam, I think it is/was due to my lack of clarity and intention. Which makes sense, as that is why I used to be annoyed with work as I didn't really know what I wanted to achieve in the long run and why I was doing it. I have a way ahead now, I wont give up tinkering with my electronics, but I think I will approach it a little differently. 04 July 17 Game Free: 79 (17 Apr) Happy Independence Day to my American comrades! So I made another video blog/clip/entry/thingamy jig. After making the first one I think it really helped, so I was thinking about making another one when I had a chat to Cam and he recommended it. Everything came up Milhouse to make another one. It felt good and I think I am motivated to get back to tinkering with my electronics again, and now that I have a clear understanding of my intent behind it, and a plan to not use it as an escape, I feel keen about them again. Now just to find time! Quite busy at the moment, which is probably a good thing, except I can feel myself coming down with my wife's flu. Spent some time thinking about these people who quit the forums after reaching their targets or whatever. It's an interesting concept, and I guess if you are in the mindspace that you have achieved everything you want to or think you can from the forums then move on and continue developing your life, but that is not where my mind is at. There is still so much more to learn and achieve from at least keeping your/my own journal. I'll probably revisit this at a later date but I think there is so much to achieve in the community that walking away too early could slow personal development. I think the new notebook worked on making me more productive. I spent the first hour of the day breaking down what I want to achieve into big blocks, and then the daily sheet breaks them down even further into tasks or targets. I achieved about 8 yesterday in between my phone ringing constantly... Mondays man, they're brutal. I did the silly thing of not bringing the sheets home to write my target or blocks here so I'll have to remember to do that tomorrow, or take a photo of them. Baby steps. The notebook gives me the vibe that it will get better over time as you develop your blocks and reflection as well, so while I am glad I have started using it, it's definitely a long term thing. I am considering leaving my phone at home and not taking it to work in order to try and increase those productivity levels. The downside to that is I will leave my podcasts behind, but I think it is something I should at least try. Again, the more I see people glued to their phones staring at the tiny screen, the less I am interested in using my own so I think it is a good step. I already put my phone in the bedroom as soon as I get home now so my son doesn't get in the habit of always seeing me use it, so I think this is the next logical step.

Truer words have never been spoken.

How do you keep yourself motivated to study for so long during one day? I think you could teach me a few tricks! I get distracted too easily.

That's my problem for today - time to myself. I am not sure if I like it, or I have the right activities in place! I feel a bit worried that I am either wasting this time or opening the door to relapse, and it is making me feel "off". That is why I didn't end up coming online yesterday, is when I feel like that I get so restless and agitated, and it usually takes all my energy to not be a jerk to my family (or troll online!) so I try to focus on doing chores or something. I got the idea of my morning routine from the Getting Things Done (GTD) podcast. They gave 3 things to do in the morning - 1) create content, don't consume it to set the tempo for the day, 2) drink a glass of water as soon as you wake up, and 3) get up an hour before everyone else to get your day going. I have managed to implement 2 out of those 3, but now I am sliding on the content consuming. When I was studying, my morning routine consisted of waking up and reading my draft before doing anything else, then getting ready for the day. That way I was thinking of how to improve it while showering or having breakfast, and had some time to make some changes to it before everyone else woke up. These days because I am on a break between semesters, it consists of doing my journal entry, going over my budget, and tweaking my computer. I try to avoid mindlessly researching or watching videos so I don't set a bad tempo for the day - unless it's a Cam video to get my motivation back on track! But to be honest it doesn't really matter what you do I think (apart from not playing games), the whole point of it is to have an hour to yourself where it is quiet and free of any distractions. I find it gets me in my flow state for the remainder of the morning. 03 July 17 Game Free: 78 (17 Apr) Bringing my post timings back into a routine, it looks like I have missed 3 days! I think it's closer to 2, but with my last couple of posts being at really weird times it has been thrown out a little. The reason why I had a bit of a break was as I indicated to Moe above, I've gone into a bit of what I like to call a "hobby crisis". A more accurate term might be a "time crisis" but it makes me think of that old shooter arcade game. It all orginates on Saturday morning (it's Monday now), when the family had made a lot of plans for the day as it was the first day we have all had at home with no commitments for quite some time. But then my son fell off a chair (lets not talk about how he got there in the first place) and got what we thought was a concussion. The rest of the day consisted of looking after him, him being upset and crying a lot, etc. The end result was I was cooped up in the house all day when my mindset was all about go out and have a family day, so I ended up working on some electronics projects. Specifically, throwing out a lot of old stuff (trying to get on the minimalist bandwagon) and then some soldering of PCBs. The problem is I did quite a bit, and then at the end I wrecked a board (I think). I don't think it completely undid all of my work, but it at least set me back a few hours. Then began the crisis. I am starting to think that maybe my hobbies (of which this is basically the only one) are a waste of time rather than contributing to my life or personal development. Should I drop messing around with electronics for no real tangible reason and focus on more productive hobbies, like investing or creating a blog etc? Am I substituting the wasting of time by gaming with the wasting of time by another activity? I couldn't get my head right for so long (and to be honest I don't think it is still right) on the subject until I went for a 16km (10ish miles) the next morning. I am thinking a bit better now (got a few ideas to retackle the electronics) but I was quite a jerk to my family afterwards as a result, which generally happens when I get in weird moods. I need to decide whether my hobbies are actually worthwhile and contributing to my life or to find some new ones. This issue will all go away in a few weeks when I start up studying again and throw everything I have into to try and improve my grades versus the usual "do the minimum work so I can play games" that I have had with my studies for the last year, but that is still three weeks away. I am worried this is an opening for me to go back gaming. Today is the first day of my new notebook that will help me break down my goals. I left it at work so I don't have it here to include in my post, which in hindsight wasn't a great solution, but I will try and add them to the post later. I am hoping it will help me structure my purpose for the day so I don't feel so lost like I do above, and kick me into a productivity mode to power through some goals at work that I haven't had any traction on for weeks. Hope everyone else is doing well!

Mate I'm doing crypto next semester! You can be my tutor

Welcome back mate! Are you going to retry the Gamequitters Challenge? It is on my to do list but I haven't got around to starting it yet

I hope you wore a hat mate! The sun is a nasty thing that. I hope you make the most of a day to yourself - early on I got really worried about having days to myself as I would be too tempted to game. I am still a little bit worried now because I am not studying, so I am trying really hard to stay busy as well. Do you have a schedule or a plan for the day to follow? That might negate it. Great work about your studies! As part of your appeal, do they do regular reports on your progress or wait until the end of the semester? Either way they are going to be impressed mate!

I am curious to see your new format! I am after a better one for mine since I had a massive anxiety relapse a few months ago, now it's not structured.

30 June 17 Game Free: 75 (17 Apr) Ok I have managed to delete this entry, twice. I need to go easy on the keyboard shortcuts - I think I am going to make up a card to stick next to my screen to help, because I don't really like typing the same thing out three times! Need to try and remember what I wrote. The last 24 hours have been a whirlwind after I found out about getting the job. A combination of answering the phone, responding to everyone's messages, and celebrating with mates. It was a blast, but I unfortunately broke a lot of streaks I had going; Duolingo, clearing emails, budget entries, etc. I will have to make a fresh start on them today, and maybe shift more of them into my morning routine so no matter what happens throughout the day I will keep the momentum. Have some newfound motivation to sort a bunch of stuff out at work so I don't leave it as a mess when I leave, so I will need to buckle down and get some traction on those starting next week. Leave everything in a better state than you found it they say. It ties in well that I finally got around to going through the notebook/to-do PDF I bought in detail. It is going to be quite handy and ties in with discussions with Cam over weekly goals and my leadership coach with year goals. It shows you how to break them down and then tracks your progress towards them like an XP bar towards levelling up. I am sure it will make it easier to do and track my progress and build a positive feedback loop, so I will start implementing that on Monday as well. I have been leaving my inbox open all day lately - I need to stop doing that again. Going to try and spend a lot of time with my family today to celebrate! P.S. using a doodle I draw during a boring meeting last week as my new avatar, it makes me smile!

29 June 17 Game Free: 74 (17 Apr) So this is actually last night's post that I didn't finish so it's a bit out of whack. I had all good intentions of posting last night and then it didn't occur for a couple of reasons, the main one being MagPi 59 came out yesterday, so I settled in at my desk with a hot chocolate and read it cover to cover. The reason it was a high priority to me is I have been following them on twitter for a while, and I know that they were working on an article about using a RPi as a desktop replacement. Since that is what I do at home I wanted to see their verdict! To be honest it was all quite predictable, I could of did the article for them, but one line really stood out for me. The editor wrote "because you have to manage your resources carefully, I found there was a lot less distractions by only focusing on one or two things at once, and my productivity was really good." Boom. Definitely something I am a subscriber to. I am glad I made this choice. By the time I finished reading it I really had no desire to be at my desk anymore so I couldn't bring myself to finish writing this post or working on a few other things from my list, so I shut everything down and went and laid in bed with my wife who was very sick - seems someone is always sick in our house this year! I'll get it next I bet. Surfed the web on my phone for a while, got angry about how much I use my phone, and went to sleep. I think I am going to try and do a few more things to use my phone less, and I think the main one now is to move twitter from it. I use twitter for my news, and I used it to give up facebook so that my constant need to check things was somewhat productive, but now I think twitter has turned into a problem as I spend way too much time looking at it. The MagPi article talked about using the TweetDeck plugin for Chromium, so I might give that a try, and then that way I can only check twitter once a day. A chunk of my day was spent thinking about games, sadly. I was talking to someone about progress, specifically how the courses that I teach need constant developing because of tech progress, and it seems like that the amount of course development needed compounds so quickly - ten or twenty years ago they might have needed a revision every two years, now we need at least one or two revisions per year. In another ten years we will probably need three or four revisions per year. That is the price of progress, but it got me thinking about a game that had me by the short and curlies when my son was born - Factorio - and how that escalated so quickly from building one factory or object into building hundreds and hundreds due to tech progress. I indulged it for maybe half an hour before I became aware of what was going on and moved on. The silver lining in the cloud is that I didn't feel super compelled to play it again, but there was a slight urge in my stomach. I think maybe I wasn't compelled because it would have been too much effort to get my computers set up again and I had just gone through taping all the cables down on my desk. Very thankful for that barrier I put up, otherwise the game free number might be a big fat zero again! Spent a little bit looking into the dates for the next semester of study. I have another three weeks off before it starts again, I am a little nervous about the result I will get for my last assignment, but I do have new found motivation to work harder and harder at it and finally get this degree done, which I can thank purely to this detox process. I have been circling this degree for ten years now and have been happy to drag my feet along because I would of much preferred gaming - now I want something to show for my time. Doesn't matter if I never use the degree or not, I want it done and next to my name. Bit of a nervous wreck about tomorrow (or today depending on the time zone) as I find out about if I was successful about the job I applied for. It's kind of a promotion but kind of not, you have to go through a year long selection process for it and opens up a lot of professional doors later down the track. Not sure when I will post back on here as a result, I might be devastated or out partying - we will see.

Have you tried freelancer.com? I am not sure about the rules of promoting other sites on here, but the CEO of freelancer was on a podcast I listened to recently and one of the jobs you can put on there is logo design, the price of is on average around the $20-50 mark.

Here to help brother!

C#.... that makes me feel old bro. When I was at uni it was dubbed "the language of the future". I'm going to pick up python I think, seems simple. I'll check out Ruby.

Amazed by your willpower Szyslak, you're crushing it.

28 June 17 Game Free: 73 (17 Apr) Today was a bit crap. I woke up in the morning feeling like it was going to be a crap day, and last time I felt that I used my anxiety template to break down the problem for a way ahead. I didn't do it this time though, I was pretty sure I knew why and I was not feeling as bad as last time. It was due to some personnel issues at work that were getting quite political that I really didn't want to get involved in. But I sucked it up and got on with the day. It threw my flow off in the morning but at least the situation was resolved, even if I snapped and got angry at someone - I recognised the trigger but didn't do anything about it to check it. I spent the rest of the day being disappointed with my reactions, but I have since written an email to apologise to the person, I will send it to them tomorrow. That should make me feel more at ease. Also didn't run today either, first day in a while that I haven't done that. I woke up this morning feeling a bit flu-ish (raspy throat and more tired than usual) so I thought I would skip the run, take some medication and rest up. I guess all of those 3 things combined is why it was such a bad day. Well ok bad is too strong a word - I would say a mediocre day. Got home and messed around with my desk setup now that my wife is home and can look after my son. They spent the afternoon playing so I managed to clear up my desk - taped up some cords and threw out a few things to make it a lot cleaner. Also moved my RPi that I want to use as my computer now to the big screen. I almost totally disconnected my last power-hogging machine until I realised I haven't backed up the data for 14 months... whoops. So I have started that tonight, with the aim that in a couple of days I will put that in storage as well. Hoping to get back on track tomorrow and have a good day. It should be relatively quiet at work which will allow that to happen. Absolutely no urges for gaming today at all, quite happy with that, the detox must be starting to have a more conspicuous impact on my brain now.

What languages are you programming in? I really want to write some scripts.

I did read somewhere that watching your favourite shows in a different language really helps. I tried it with Spanish but felt they spoke way too fast for me to catch up. Maybe a kid's movie or show is a better idea, let me know how you go, I might give it a try!

@Mettermrck all I remember about the conversion from my programming days is that 100 degrees fahrenheit is about 38 degrees. @Corvus Albus I feel your pain about gaming dreams - I still get them after 72 days, and I think I will for a while. The only thing I can say to you about them is when you wake up, don't get on the computer. Make yourself busy doing something else - making a big breakfast, going for a walk, doing chores around the house. I have found that if I get on the computer after having a dream like that it is all over red rover - either I will start playing games or I will endlessly surf the web about games. Either way, the tempo is set for the day and pretty much ruins your whole day.

The whole "windows on linux" and "linux on windows" environments/containers should be able to blur that boundary. I haven't paid much attention to the news releases as I am not a developer so don't have much use for it, but it may be something that you could utilise. I have yet to try Linux Mint - it has been on my to do list for a while ever since they released the Debian version that was rolling - I like the appeal of rolling distributions rather than releases every six months that you need to keep reinstalling. Lubuntu is my platform of choice as I am a fan of LXDE, and I have seen Puppy linux but never tried it either, I think they have a Pi version so I should give it a go. 27 June 17 Game Free: 72 (17 Apr) Very challenging day today - I slipped up with controlling my emotional triggers and got angry a few people which I immediately regret. The triggers were either because they were contacting me on my day off or because I didn't have control of the situation - not sure which. Something that no doubt I will reflect on more tomorrow while I am at work and see them all again. I am finding that my biggest challenge going forward is to stop these "snap" responses to people, that when I can feel myself getting agitated/anxious that I need to stop and pause before saying/doing something I regret later. This is something that I need to work on not just for my professional life, but also personal, as I find myself getting annoyed at things such as my son not following instructions and snapping at him or others, where really he is just learning his boundaries. Not much else really to report on for today. Didn't achieve as much as I wanted but I am really worn out, looking forward to my wife being back tomorrow so I can get some rest! Have had no desire to play games again today, these methods of holding myself accountable are very effective because thats what I think about now instead, that I don't want to lapse and let people down. It is an example of what I heard recently of telling family/friends that you want to achieve or do something before you start, because then the thought of them seeing you not achieve it helps hold you accountable. Or something like that, can't think clearly because I need sleep. Enjoyed making a video today on what I have been working on the last few weeks! I thought I would be anxious and struggle through it, mixing up my words like I usually do in front of groups, but I found it really easy and therapeutic. I look forward to making more in the future, maybe it could be a way to document weekly goals or something. Need to look at the diary tomorrow. It's going to be another busy day.

No physical textbooks seem to be the norm these days, or at least have been for my degree. It's a great idea, it means I don't have to go hunting through libraries or (more commonly) I have forgotten to purchase the book before the semester so fall a few weeks behind while I wait for it to get posted to me. The only gripe I have is that generally the programs you use to access the textbooks are Windows-only, and also have only 2-3 devices you can use it on. This makes it difficult to use with my desk setup! First world problems though I guess. 26 June 17 Game Free: 71 (17 Apr) Weird day really, productive but not productive. Kicked off the day with a great chat with Cam, and had a few plans of what I wanted to achieve today - and haven't achieved any of them, apart from a 15km run. I don't feel like I have been lazy and not done anything though, I sorted a lot of issues at work and did a few chores around the house, but I guess because they weren't targets or goals that I had set out to achieve during the day, then I don't feel productive. I've decided today to sell my XBox One. To be honest I had completely forgotten that I had it! I only noticed yesterday while I was sitting on the ground in front of our cabinet playing with my son and I saw it through the glass door I figured that is a good enough excuse as any to get rid of it! I'm also (finally) coming from a Raspberry Pi - I have decided to pull the trigger on switching my final machine over to a Raspberry Pi, as a somewhat new hobby. I got the inspiration from one of the editors from MagPi who was challenged to use a Pi for work for a whole week, and seemed to manage it. I've learnt a lot by tinkering with these little gadgets so I think it will be fun trying to push them to their limits. If anyone has any experience in Linux or ARM devices, let me know! Ultimately I don't have much to talk about today. I printed out the diary/organiser but it took all day (kept forgetting to load paper etc) so haven't had a chance to read it in detail yet. Tomorrow is going to be awesome, I have a day off work just to spend with my son before my wife returns from her trip. I know I wont have a chance to play or think about games because the little fella won't let me! Hoping to see Moe back on the forums soon too.... Moe where you at buddy?

The juice will be worth the squeeze!

You're ahead of the curve starting at 21! The possibilities are endless at your age, good luck mate.

I have read about Khan Academy and have had their app installed from time to time but never really sunk my teeth into it. Maybe I need to give it another go. Because I am back studying at university again I don't really go searching for new topics and my tech hobby has been relegated to the shadows! The Commonwealth is great for exchange programs and definitely is a perk of still being under the Monarchy in one shape or another! Unfortunately both my professional and personal situations wouldn't allow me to take off somewhere else for extended periods. That door is closed to me for now, maybe I'll have another shot in the future.

Here to help mate! You've got this, I like your new mindset, you appear really focused now!