JRyvoan

Another day, another challenge, another progression to the goal. So I've been talking some on the stopgaming Discord channel some, and I must say they have some great comments and ideas. One user, named Sjoti, made a comment about building a barrier for reentry for playing video games. One of the ideas he proposed was taking apart or breaking down the gaming computer that I was using and using something else moving forward so I had to take more time before I sat down and just played a video game. I have an iMac that I use at home with my calendars, banking, etc on it. It's powerful enough to play video games but most of the game I enjoy playing don't have Mac versions on it. I also don't plan on installing any games on this computer anyways. So I've done that, the computer is sitting in my closet right now unplugged and put away. I am starting to notice that I'm filling my time that I was playing video games with just watching TV and fiddling around the internet. I've been on Reddit more, and I've watched more TV shows in the last week than I have in almost ten years. So I realize I have work to do, and I'm taking it one day at a time. But I've still not touched a video game in 9 days. Thanks so much, Jeran

Well I've missed several days of posting because I worked three shifts all in a row at work, and they are some of the last night shifts I wanted to work. This weekend was also some of the roughest nights I've ever worked in my ten years at this hospital. Regardless, I had no urges to play video games because all I did was work, eat, and sleep for three days straight. Today is the day of weakness for me. After three days like that I'm feeling tired, bored, and in a moment of weakness. I started up Steam because all my friends were playing a battle royale game and needed another. I thought to myself, "Yeah, I can destress this way. I'll just have to reset the counter on Reddit." I loaded up Steam and noticed there was a 5GB patch for the game and that it would take me over 10 hours to download it. Then I realized what was going on, that I was falling back into previous habits, and that I needed to change. As a moment of distraction I've come here to write this and I can feel the urge fading. I've put on some music and while I'm still listening to them in their group play their game, I'm not playing with them and I'm working on other projects. This week will be the last week for awhile where I have these late nights of nothing to do as I'm moving to a more normal Monday - Friday job during the day and I'll be around every evening and weekend offs. So the amount of activities I'll have access to moving forward will only increase. I had started this to basically say that I remember last week I was posting about how I was having no issues with not playing games and Cam made the comment of the "honeymoon" phase was usually fairly easy. I believe that now, and now we can start the real work. I need to finish that Respawn book, I may do that tonight. Jeran

Welcome to the community man. I'm just starting down this path so I'm not really someone that can give a lot of advice or guidance but I know that you just posting here in a great first step. I'm a nurse by trade, so I just wanted to let you know that you should never consider yourself a loser and even though you might look back and think that you wasted a lot of time playing video games, that was time that you enjoyed at the time. Perspectives change as we grow and change throughout this strange world but we should never look at the past as something of deep regret. It happened and I can't go back and change it, so let me work on a new tomorrow. You should try the 90 day detox for gaming (which it sounds like might be really easy) and start a journal with us. The people here are really interactive and it's a fun community. Look forward to it man, Good luck!

So I've noticed over the last few days that this all seems really easy for me. Something that I've literally done for years to just pick up and move away from. Like proving it to myself is something that is easy. I've had next to no urges (except for a small one last night) and I've handled them all just fine. I'm starting to think that is because I'm excited about the thought of this project and I know this is my focus right now. It's almost like the adrenaline is what is keeping me going right now. I'm very curious to see how I will be one week, two weeks, three weeks out. After the new and cool of this wears off. I imagine that is when I'll be needing this forum and community the most. Did anyone have a similar feeling at the start?

I guess the purpose of having a daily journal is to actually write in the journal daily. Here it is, just a few days into this, and I've already failed at that task. However, it's not because I've fallen back to my old ways. I've actually just been really busy doing other things and I did not think to sit down and write. I am working this entire weekend on night shift and this weekend and next week will be my final shifts on night shift and I'll be moving to a day shift job. I'm hoping this will allow me to socialize better. As far as hobbies go, I've taken up Guitar and Spanish and two different projects I want to work on. I'm still thinking about what I want to do for a social project but I'm looking forward to the other two as of right now. So I said I've been busy, what have I done? Well, I've moved myself off my gaming desktop and moved everything back to my iMac, iPad, and iPhone. I've been working on getting all of those linked together so that they're communicating and letting me use them better. I'm going to be using OmniFocus and the GTD philosophy to work through these steps and steps and help improve myself moving forward. I've used the GTD philosophy and practice in work for many years but I've never also brought it together with my home life since there was "so little going on" that I didn't see a need to. Now that I've sat down and looked at everything I realize that I just thought that because I didn't want to admit that I needed to do more than play video games all day. All in all, I'm excited about all of this still and I'm looking forward to things to come. I had a huge urge to play video games tonight while all my friends were on but instead I was working on these other projects that will benefit me in the long run. I'm starting to realize that I very much have an addiction mindset instead of an investment mindset and that is a huge problem I need to fix. Identifying it was step one, now I need to figure out how to fix it.

I'd be interested in this. I recently used a raspberry pi to build a small little tablet and I don't use them as much as I would like to but I'm hoping that will change with me moving away from the games.

I guess I should start posting on this. I took an easy start to all of this by looking at this about two hours before I went to bed on Sunday and then working both Monday and Tuesday night. So tonight is my first night to actually have to STOP myself from playing games of any type. So far I’m doing okay, but I’ve just filled my extra time with surfing the internet and watching YouTube videos. I know eventually I’m going to have to replace that as well because I don’t want to replace video games with just sitting at my computer all night instead. Two weeks and I start my day shift job, I’m looking forward to that. That will give me more opportunities to socialize with people and hopefully less time to sit here in darkness and have absolutely nothing to do. I will do my best to start posting on this every day, this weekend will be an interesting challenge because I’m going to work three different twelve hour shifts in a row, but I will make an effort! I’m not really sure what to say here that I already havn’t said on the subreddit or in my introduction post. I’m just looking forward to changing myself. My first step for tonight and tomorrow night is to read through the Respawn book and see what steps it suggest. The first step was to sign up on the forum and website and introduction, etc so I'm interested to see where it goes from there. But I want to do a single pass through the entire book and then go back and work down the worksheets as I do a more thorough pass. Thanks for listening

Hey everyone, This is a long time coming for me. I've been saying for the last few YEARS that "tomorrow" is the day that I was going to start whatever activity I wanted to work towards. That I could take the trash out tomorrow, that I can wash my clothes later. I can diet another time. I can reply to my GF text message an hour from now (which turns into days later, which turns into her leaving) I can't continue down this path. I'm nearly 30 years old, I've been gaming since before I was TEN. All summer long, in the house playing on my computer. Now it's every day off from work. Every HOUR off from work that I don't have to do some vital function to hide this truth from others I'm on my computer surfing Reddit and playing Video Games. I honestly don't consider myself a huge gamer, I play socially with friends when they are around (each evening from about 4pm to midnight) but since I'm working nights that's just the start of my night and I usually surf Reddit from midnight until 10am when I finally go to bed. This is all prime time when I could be doing other things. I've said for years I wanted to learn programming, I want to learn Guitar. I need to eat better. I need to exercise. I should play with my dogs more. I should read this book. I should do MORE. Ultimately I sit down and just think about what I need to do, and then load the front page of Reddit again and start scrolling until the purple links stop and continue reading the comments. My journey isn't necessarily about stopping video games as much as it is stopping the addiction I have to technology, to computers, and to the internet. I posted something on r/StopGaming yesterday and someone made the comment of, "think about how your life would be right now I you had started working on your other goals a year ago." And that comment alone hit me hard. It's not necessarily a rude statement to make, it's not even a rude statement to make. However it was one of the comments where you sit there and think, "Damn, This person is right." So here I am. First gaming as a whole. I'm going to start with 90 days off from any kind of video game. I'm also going to do my best over these 90 days to not just fill that time with more Reddit, Twitch, and YouTube but actually work towards goals. Lets see how this does, Jeran