Some Yahoo

I made this program. It shows one square for every week in a 90 year lifespan. It checks off the ones I have used.

Every Thursday Morning before work I take my wife and daughter out to breakfast. On Fridays, I meet a friend for breakfast. These things make me happy.

I had no luck tapering off. Maybe you'll do better, but I always found that if I told myself I'd quit at 9PM or whenever, there would always be that one day when I was just so close to level 19, I'd hate to quit playing now! Or the group is forming up but someone says "AFK, BRB" and I end up waiting 20 minutes past my limit while everyone gets ready for a PVP or dungeon, and before I know it, it's 1AM. I have tried this about 500 times. The only thing that worked for me was to uninstall all the games so that if I want to play, I have to spend 3 days downloading it again.

Spiffy got a walk today. He was one happy pup!

Update: His name is Spiffy

10 days in and I can already feel the need to game going away. I am starting to see games as the enemy.

I was just thinking about the time I rushed through a Valentine's Day dinner with my wife so I could get some special costume on (I think it was) Tera Rising. Also, my dog (the one in my profile photo) needs to walk every day. He's getting old and walking will extend his life greatly. It doesn't hurt me to get my eyes off the screen for a while too.

Since I can't sleep I thought I'd list all the games I have played in some order just to prove how old I am Star Trek game at Lawrence Livermore lab in Berkely. Yes, this one played on a teletype and printed on a long roll of yellow paper. Coin-op games in arcades Pac Man Defender Moon patrol Galaga Mines of Moria at college played on a PDP-11 that was built from a kit. Got my Atari 400, then 800, then 800XL (and I actually worked a couple years at Atari home computer division) Defender Pac Man Star Raiders Jump Man BallBlazer Got my first PC (an IBM XT clone - it's still in the garage) Scorched Earth Trade Wars After the dial-up modem days... Subspace (now Subspace Continuum) Tomb Raider Descent Doom Eve Online Second Life There (when it was free) Star Wars: The Old Republic Tera Rising City of Heroes DC Universe Online Blade and Soul Recently I had been uninstalling SWTOR, DCUO, Tera, and Blade and Soul over and over, then trying to quit, only to find that everyone who knows me in real life had written me out of their lives (because I always turned down invitations), and with nothing else to do, I always went back to gaming after a few weeks.

You are not alone.

Doug, you're already winning. You realize you have an issue with it You desire change. Doug, I am 56 years old. You may think I'm a Dad (which I am) but I am also a cautionary tale. I used to game at work, before companies started installing firewalls to prevent screwing around on work time. I started working from home when the economy took a dive in 2008 and I found that I was missing my daughters major events and other family stuff because I used to go in to my office, work about 2 hours, and from 10AM to sometimes 1AM I would game all friggin day. What do I have to show for it? I have made billions of points, earned a barge full of gold and attained oh, say 7,000 levels. None of that helps me now. My daughters are grown (no thanks to me), and I am old. My vision is going, my reflexes are going, I have diabetes because I never moved my ass for 3 or 4 decades. What's important for you here is this... Realize that no one outside of the games cares what you did in the game. Lean that your guild-mates, and others who "like" you online are not real friends. If they have never been to your house, they are not your friends. I have worked my whole life, and I have come to think of the money I earn as points, and promotions or other accolades I get at work as levelling. I have had several hobbies that gaming has shut down for me. I used to play bass guitar, but I dropped it I have tried to write about 30 books and never made it out of chapter 3 or 4 I played for a time with animation and computer graphics - I used to be pretty good. I have even tried my hand at designing video games. I now realize that the millions of hours of my life that I have wasted on gaming could easily have been spent on making me more successful at any of these ventures. Gaming at our level stunts your social growth Interacting with real people in real life helps you feel less awkward around people. I know it's embarrassing to make social mistakes, but that's how we learn what people expect of us. No faux pas at school will end your life, or even harm it much. I am 56 but my social learning is still at about a 17 year old's level. I just haven't matured much beyond that as far as social interaction is concerned. Gaming will never bring you love or true satisfaction. Gaming will never make you wealthy or famous. Games only care about one thing: parting you with enough money to pay their programmers and keep their massive server farms online. What I'm saying Doug is, you don't want to end up like me, struggling to be social with almost no experience, only a couple of real friends, terrible negotiation and debating skills, overweight and on anti-depressants. There are plenty of suggestions on this site for things to do that help you grow into a real person, and since I am this much of a failure at this stuff I won't presume to recommend anything. Just think of this as yourself in 42 years time sending a note to your own past to warn you about this path. I know this kind of got into the TL;DR zone, sorry. Just realize that I'm rooting for you. I hope you make a better life than I did. There's still plenty of time for you.

I just calculated that my 90 days is up 2/18/18. I really don't want to relapse and have to start this over. By way of entertainment, here is a YouTube. I think accurately describes - well - just about everyone.

Ok, some notes. I am substituting youtube for games - and the result is that my head is getting all full of political opinion. Better than wasting 15 hours a day in Blade And Soul, but still not reaching my potential. Also my meds just got changed, and they are playing a little havoc on me. muscle pain, ringing in my ears, ick. Makes it hard to concentrate on my work. It doesn't help that I have a MASSIVE deadline coming up, and I am extremely stressed out about it.

One thing I want to note here - In conjunction with quitting gaming, I have gone to a doctor to deal with possible depression. Not sure how, but it seems like the two things are linked. Fundamentally, a lifetime spent gaming has no real satisfaction, no real personal growth, no real accomplishments. As I said in my profile, I am an old man. There's a lot of regret rolling around in my cranial cavity.

Slept great last night... I just chuckled because the last several games I got took 3+ days to download. That means I need to have 3 full days of "relapse thinking" in order to actually relapse.

Day 1 I want to quit gaming because I am a human being and I crave social contact. When I am old and dying, no guild member or game company is going to be there by my bedside, my friends and family will. The people who matter are getting too little of me. I have 2 friends and I give them less and less. I feel like an outcast at social events because I have nothing real to share with anyone, It goes like this: Friend one: "Last weekend we all went up to the lake and played in the water" Friend two: "I spent the whole weekend practicing for the community choir" Me: "There's a cool line in one mission in DCUO where Wonder Woman says a line from Firefly." My social status updates are not about me. I have too little of a real life to converse with anyone. As for Today, it seems some factor caused me to only get 3 hours sleep last night, so my "free time" was taken up sleeping. I am really hoping for better tonight. I need to do some amazing work this week. I can report that I managed to stay out of all games today, and off of YouTube. So this day totally counts.

It's day Zero (I refuse to call it 1 because 1 must be earned). Uninstalled SWTOR. Uninstalled Blade and Soul nuked Steam nuked NCSoft launcher Strategy for getting through the long boring hours? take walks play with my dog Maybe I'll call my Dad. Oh yeah and try to get 8 hours of billable each day I fully expect to relapse as I have done many times before, just not TODAY. Not sure if wasting time on YouTube should count. I think I'll steer clear of YT just for today to be safe.