in_code_veritas

#Day4: "Nature abhors a vacuum" Aristotle. It's not been a week yet, so not quite time enough to start talking about a streak. However, without video games I now have a giant hole in my day that I've spend the last day filling with TV shows. This cold/flu doesn't help either. I suppose it is a marginal improvement. I'm not watching cat videos, but documentaries and historical dramas, so there is some kind of broad development happening. Thankfully, I think I'm getting over this cold/flu by tomorrow and should be able to at least go out for a walk to take me away from the internet for a while.

#Day3: Another challenge. I've caught a nasty cold. Head feels like it's stuffed with straw. Aches and pains. Feels like my body is being drained from the nose. All that good stuff. In what is now my past, I remember actually being kind of happy getting sick. What better time to do nothing but play video games?! You're not up to doing anything productive anyway, right? Well, not anymore. I see my excuses for what they are. Suck it up, buttercup. Disconnected and put away my gaming mechanical keyboard. (God, the amount of money I spent on accessories and PC components.) The plan is to save up some money and buy a new PC, this time exclusively designed and built for productivity and to serve as a blank slate, of sorts. @thehondasc00py: Thanks. I actually did that before. I had a dedicated gaming google/steam account and my current one was for non-gaming/education. But, addiction being what it is, I invariably polluted the non-gaming account with gaming videos.

Thanks Cam and Hitaru. I really just spoke the painful, shameful truth that was starring me in the face all this time. Time to own it.

Thanks for the advice, Brad. Unfortunately, it's not quite so simple. Besides entertainment I use YT for self-development (learning to code) quite extensively and there is no other platform that I know of that I can get the material that's not beyond a paywall. I've been hitting the tutorials pretty hard today (flu + cold outside = coding from dawn till dusk) and I think google has caught on that I've made a change in my consumption habits. It's actually an opportunity for tracking my progress, after a fashion: the closer I stick with the program, the less gaming videos will show up on my feed. I'll know I've passed a milestone when I don't see them at all anymore. Appreciate the support. All the best on your journey as well.

#Day2: I've been here before. The number of "day 2" days I've had is beyond count. One of the hardest things to do is to get rid of triggers for relapse. For me, one of the biggest sources of this is YouTube. I don't have cable and I consume almost all of my entertainment through online videos. But YouTube remembers things that I would much rather forget - Let's Plays, Beginner Guides, Montages, etc. The next few days, maybe even weeks, will be difficult as the algorithm will continue to prod me to keep consuming as I did. I don't blame them for it. It's a good faith effort to give the consumer more of what they want. Google is not responsible for my addiction, nor are they enabling me. I am not a patient, an agent-less sponge. I chose to consume the media that I am reminded of, and now I chose not to. Every single thumbnail and title is an opportunity to grow stronger.

#Day 1: Today I have publicly committed to the 90 days detox program for video games. I uninstalled all my games. I uninstalled Steam. The journey begins.

Hi everyone. My name is Dmitri, I'm 31, I live in Toronto, Canada, and I've been playing video games since I was 13. But it's time to change. I want to quit because instead of writing my PhD dissertation this past year, I've spent thousands of hours building a virtual life online. I want to quit because instead of gaining productive skills that will make me valued and employable, I've gotten really good at capturing flags in Battlefield. I want to quit because instead of getting rid of the unhealthy weight that is making me winded going up the stairs and hurting my back, I've been min-maxing my online avatars. I want to quit, because instead of spending more quality time with my girlfriend before we broke up, I was trying to unlock sex scenes in the Witcher and Mass Effect. And if that's not reason enough, I don't know what is. Thanks.