Some Yahoo

This is freaking amazing. Seems COMPLETELY true to me. How I Tricked My Brain To Like Doing Hard Things (dopamine detox)

After you watch that one, try this one.

Spinning out this week. Feeling tired and overwhelmed and alone. Like I've been left to twist in the wind.

My angels are actually winning: I have not gamed (other than phone scrabble against the wife and daughter), and I am slowly starting to feel a little less dead tired all the time. God, it's a long slog. The thing is: I know that if I start gaming again, I'll have to start this long dark slog all over again. And I really REALLY don't want to have to do that.

Thanks Jason, my drawing skills are improving thanks to some classes I'm taking on Skillshare. For years I had about a 3rd grade skill level at drawing, but I think I am up somewhere around 4th or 5th now. Still getting used to drawing on my laptop though, and I think I have been using entirely too low resolution. Next image will be 4x this resolution. I find that I balk at authority - because, HEY I'm American - even my own better angels. My typical relapse looks like this: Me: Damn I miss gaming. Angel: You know better than this... Me: (starts the download) yeah I'm just a little nostalgic for the graphics. I'll be fine. Angel: Bullshit! This is why you FAIL! Me: Yeah but it's so fun. (begins the install) Angel: Look you idiot. I'm YOU. I'm you from months ago when you swore gaming off, and I'm you from 6 weeks from now when you will realize the destruction you are about to wreak on your mind. Please. I'm not your boss, or your mommy, I'm LITERALLY YOU. Me: Yeah, but nostalgia...

This is my cringey sketch I based the render on.

Good stuff. Yeah I would have hated Zoom U. Interviewing is a skill. You get better every time you do it. Here is some sage interviewing advice I have put together over a few decades. Take every interview you are offered. Get in front of somebody and fail at it to learn how to do it better. You're gonna suck at first, but look at it like a game skill. Level it up. Look up the organization before you go. Are they a public company? Are they a Mom n Pop? How old is the company? What do they do? Whenever possible, make them do most of the talking. People love to hear their own voices. Answer directly, do not lie. If you don't know something, try to relate it to something you DO know. Do you know the AJAX .net Framework? no but I learned JQuery and JavaScript a little on my own, I'm sure I can pick it up. If you have no indirect experience, just say so. No, sorry. Looking forward to learning it though. Don't ask questions about salary, vacation days, etc. that will all be in the offer letter. Make them suggest a salary level. When they say "Hey, how much salary are you looking for?" There are 2 possible outcomes. You lowball it and end up working well below scale. You shoot the moon and they freak out - you lose the opportunity. My first answer is always "Make me an offer". They will press me again and I'll say "Look, I have no idea what your benefits package looks like, that stuff is worth something to me." Get them to state a range for this position, and if it seems OK with you say, yeah, I can work with that. DON'T agree tot he lowest number. Let's say they tell you the range is... $40K to $75K. Just say if you're comfortable with that, and tell them to get you an offer letter. Most of the time they will not come back at the low boundary. When you're done, THIS IS CRITICAL: Ask the interviewer "Thanks for your time, how did I do?" if the answer is "You did great!" then the interviewer just heard his own voice say this guy did great. if the answer is "Well, you're a bit weak here" then take the opportunity to shore up the notion that you can pick it up and you're eager to learn.

Try posting in your journal to your future self. Imagine you could sit with your future self and tell him how awful D2 (or any game) makes you feel, what it does to your life, job, school, relationships. Tell him how useless it is to excel at something no one will ever care about. Then post a sticky on your screen border that says, Before installing games go to https://forum.gamequitters.com/index.php?/topic/9738-i-need-sleep-help/. There is a windows app called Sticky Notes. Just hit the Cortana button and type in "Sticky".

Thank you, me for your April 7 post. I just literally heard my own face say, I need a game, I need a game. But I came here instead. It could have ended very differently. I have recently been burned by relapsing into Tera. My other go-to, SWTOR is so insanely frustrating when you're not a subscriber that it's kinda not that tempting anymore. Why did I give up on Tera? Let me tell you this, oh future-er me. They nerfed the game so you can level to max in like a week. Then its a massive endless grind for end game gear. Three hours of frustration might yield a +2 item. it's so not worth it. Same for DCUO, except you can max in like 2 days (max is 30) then endless co-op missions with these guys who only want to play if everyone is maxxed, and if there is one wipe they bail. Then there was Eve Online. This game would be fun if I spent money on it, because the higher level skill tree is where the money is. You want big ships? Want to craft amazing ships and gear? You gotta pay. And since I am a gamequitter, my debit card is where I draw the line these days. None of this should be read as endorsements of any of these games, in fact they are full-on arguments why none of these games are satisfying.

Made this last night. the office, mug, steam, and phone are by me. the rest is downloaded. It's called "Coffee"

So let me tell you what happened to me after I uninstalled DCUO. When I say "you", I mean the Some Yahoo of the future who FORGOT how awful this was. I began to sleep 12 hours a night, and missed a lot of work. I absolutely COULD NOT stay awake or focus on my work. I have an afternoon's work and I just can't make myself DO it. On the bright side, quitting the game (again) lets me wake up with a small pilot light of hope. The dumb thing about DCUO is that I don't actually like the game that much. *sigh* Also on the upside, I am making a web site to help myself write books. Let me know if you're interested in that (nowhere near ready for release yet)

Spent a week in DCUO. Stupid brain.

I worked today. It was hard and frustrating and I didn't solve the problems I had hoped to. But I didn't game. It was hard. But I did it.

fyi, yesterday I made this:

Some things I am trying to integrate into my cognitive reality. Life is not what happens to you, it's something you build with your own drive and purpose. Life is hard. If it was easy, we'd all be lazy, and no one would be particularly successful. The universe is a dead place. Each life violently rips a hole in the omnipresent death, one that we must scratch and claw to hold open. Fucking up death and decay is where victory and happiness ultimately come from. There is no feeling better than victory. Overcoming hard obstacles is what humans were created for. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING will satisfy a human being more than a hard-won triumph. Many people never discover this, and live for tiny, momentary pleasures and hedonism. These people can never be happy, they just paper over the emptiness. Politics and social media only make me feel more helpless, impotent, and out of control. If I walk away, I won't miss them. Youtube, Netflix, Gab, Bitchute, and Deviantart exist to waste our time. I should track my productivity each day. Not to hammer myself, but to help me realize what I can accomplish in a single hour, a single day.