DaBest

Day 95 No VG - 95 day streak, No SAH - 25 day streak, NF - 1 day streak Stayed up a little late last night too, but I got to bed earlier and slept in a little today. Work was a little frustrating today with some mini-emergencies that popped up. Had some more urges today to break the sports streak. I still really miss it, but I want at least thirty days before I check anything. I'm so close. I need to go to bed earlier tonight. I feel torn in many different directions on what I also need to be focusing on, in both life and at work. I don't like that feeling.

Oh this never posted. Day 94 No VG - 94 day streak, No SAH - 24 day streak, NF - 0 day streak I stayed up very late last night after finishing my post. I was dumb. Consequently, already tired me only got three hours of sleep today. I also stayed at work until 8. On the plus side, I had a lot of completely unhinged and unfiltered conversations with some co-workers. I haven't done anything this stupid in a few months which is good. Back when I was on the Twitch/YouTube/game train, I was usually up super late at least once a week for no good reason. These past three months have been much more stable. I also almost relapsed on sports today. I was listening to someone at work listen to sports radio, which was discussing the baseball trade deadline today. I have no idea what my favorite team has done!!! However, this was just FOMO, but man did I dodge a bullet today.

To answer your question, no. Thinking about it now, most of them I have picked up after reducing internet usage/not gaming. I have more time for that and my brain refuses to be bored. But some of them, like curling, I had from before. I have definitely also increased my time in those hobbies the less time I spend on the Internet. It's like an 80/20 split. Also, I'm glad you're enjoying StayFocusd already! I hope it works out for you and makes things a bit easier.

That's true, there are always ways around these. There's no permanent fix besides finding a good cave and becoming a hermit I guess. But in all seriousness, I'm well aware of that. For me, my biggest fear is once I unblock something, that my brain will start finding more and more things to unblock. I mean, I could find ways to change the slightly change a website address so I could view a lot of the content I have blocked, but at least it's harder to manage, and therefore helps snap me out of my habit quicker. Ultimately, the blocking is just to free up the mental space of not having to choose to go on the internet so you have the time to explore other things that are more meaningful to you. My setup is weird. On my iPhone, I use the adult content blocker to simply block all of the sites I don't want to look at on my phone, which I restrict more things on. On my laptop, I have three extensions for Chrome: DF Tube, Block Site, and StayFocusd. DF Tube eliminates recommended videos from YouTube, so there's less chance of me going down the rabbit hole when I'm on it. Block Site I use to flat out block certain sites that I don't want to spend any time on (i.e., Twitch). StayFocusd I use for sites that I am okay with visiting, but I've set it up that I only have 30 minutes a day to view those sites (like YouTube). I also disabled Microsoft Edge because I began to abuse that for those dopamine hits... Reducing internet usage is arguably a lot harder, I agree. There's so much more we can distract ourselves with besides gaming. My activities right now: self-help, gym, reading, meditation, finance, cooking, salsa dancing, improv comedy, (curling), hiking, learning Japanese, learning social skills (and yes, that's sounds a bit autistic at face value, but I didn't have the best upbringing). I'm probably spread too thin. The most rewarding is improv comedy when I do well, and when I face my fears. In general, although it's not a hobby, I usually feel rewarded when I take a risk and face my fears in whatever it is. Let me know if any of this is useful for you. Your mileage may vary, so just keep trying things until you find something that works for you.

Day 93 No VG - 93 day streak, No SAH - 23 day streak, NF - 5 day streak Very tired. Long day. Positives: asked improv class out to drinks afterwards and had a fun time. I also was seemingly invited onto someone's independent improv team, and I now might be performing on Saturday. Very random but I had to jump at the chance, even though I am super not confident in my abilities right now. It will be a good learning experience at the least. Today's class went well enough, and my performance was a bit up and down. I tried to be more confident with my choices, and overall I think I was, though I had one scene where I honestly panicked midway through. Was interesting to note my self talk and thoughts during that. I also tried to work a perfectionist character into one of my scenes per my therapists request. Got a decent amount of laughs actually, and the character was definitely absurd. Food for thought. Negatives: Eh, I didn't do a great job focusing on my most important tasks at work. I had a little bit of not facing my fears today. I also pigged out a bit at the bar after. Also, I'm already sleep deprived, but now I'm even in more of a sleep debt. I was also reaching for my phone as an escape for work quite a bit today. Good times.

Hey @RB1! Glad to hear about your progress! Have you considered putting blockers on your internet usage, at least temporarily? It worked really well for me, and was a big difference why I've had a much easier time with my detox. At least for now, it's forced me to find other things to do, because no matter how many times I type in certain websites, they won't come up. It short circuited my habit and gave me an opportunity to find things that were more rewarding.

I like your idea of acting the part until it becomes the real thing. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way. I sometimes do that when I go into a hectic social situation where I know I'll be overwhelmed. As long as it gets me in the door, that's when I can start doing the things I ought to be doing. With enough practice, you will identify more and more with the person you want to be, and less and less as the gamer you used to be.

Day 92 No VG - 92 day streak, No SAH - 22 day streak, NF - 4 day streak Busy day. I was all over the place. Had to stop back at the old apartment complex so they wouldn't charge me $600 for BS. Normally, I would've rolled over like a log, but I got my stuff together and corrected them. Progress. Afterwards, more work, therapy, and bouncing over to the landlord's for a bit, calling grandparents, calling home, more stuff, blah, blah, blah....I need to learn to enjoy this more. Key take-home point from therapy is that I'm going to go out this week big time, and work on not trying to impress anyone. I try to make too many people like, or even love, me. It's too much to handle. The only person I can guarantee that will love me is me, so I shouldn't try to force anything else. It takes a lot of pressure off that way Now I need to go get some sleep. I'm the emergency contact this week, and I was up til midnight last night studying landlord-tenant law. I really wanted that money back.

Thank you both for the kind words, @NannerZ and @fawn_xoxo. To NannerZ, I highly recommend it, even if I don't practice it enough. It's a great skill to have. And to fawn, yeah, I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that this will take a lot of time to get used to. It's twenty years of pain I pushed off to the side which now I'm trying to handle. I'll just keep learning how to face it and I'll get better in time. Day 91 No VG - 91 day streak, No SAH - 21 day streak, NF - 3 day streak I woke up early for a Sunday today, despite my new bedroom being in a basement, whereas my last apartment faced east. I got groceries early, which was nice as I hate going to the grocery store when it is packed. Afterwards, I got home and finished cooking for the week by noon, and made extra veggies since I always run out. Afterwards, I guess I was still in a bit of a sleep debt and took a nap. Then, I did some laundry, and kind of procrastinated a bit. I wanted to go to an improv show tonight because I told someone I was planning on going (although I never announced this in our group chat). However, my laundry is still in the dryer, so there's that, and also I have some other things to take care of and I don't want to start the week tired at work. I would also like to spend some time tonight seeing if I can plan some social events with friends this week. That could be helpful. Today was kind of mundane I guess, but at least I got stuff done early.

Day Freaking 90 No VG - 90 day streak No SAH - 20 day streak 90 days. 90 freaking days. I'm quite happy about this. I guess I'll start with a daily recap and then a monthly/quarterly recap. Today was interesting. I got up, procrastinated quite a bit while getting up, but eventually went to a new gym to check it out. I felt pretty good after my workout and cleaned up a little bit. As dinnertime rolled around, the fears of going out started to set back in again. However, I publicly said I was going out tonight so I made sure I did. I was not ready to go clubbing again. Too many inhibitions and lies kept popping up, and I didn't realize them for what they were until I was on my way back. Instead, I compromised and said I'd go to a bar, since there isn't really anything clubby in my immediate area. The new apartment paid instant dividends, as the barrier for me going to this bar was very low compared to normal--30 minute walk and train ride versus an hour long drive and train ride. I had dinner there and made some decent chit-chat with the bartender, which is an improvement over the last time I went out when I didn't talk to anyone. I'm upset I didn't talk to the person sitting next to me, and they were by themselves too, but I struggled to break the ice and was stuck in my head. Next time, I'm going to say whatever comes to my mind. Nevertheless, tonight was an improvement over weeks past, so I am happy with myself. I'm also not trying to beat myself up so much over what I could've done tonight per my therapist's instructions, and that seems to be going okay too. Next week, more talking with strangers in a louder environment--I will learn to love clubs and parties. Monthly recap: I'm not thinking of as many suicidal thoughts this month, so that's good. The move, being busy, and the therapy has helped with that. I'm also finding it harder to binge on the internet since I've eliminated so much at this point. I'm also proud I went 20 days without any sports watching or news. I have a lot more time to read and do other things. This month really did have some ups and downs though. Overall, this is a slight improvement over last month. Quarterly recap: Night and day. At the beginning, I was emotionally numb, bingeing on the internet and games/streams almost every single weekend since the start of this year, and not doing much of anything with my life besides work. Now, I am emotionally wrecked by all the repressed emotions (which is a positive in a way), I go to bed way earlier and get more sleep, I get to work about an hour earlier, I've read a lot more, I started going to therapy, I was much more consistent with the gym, much more consistent with cleaning my apartment, and meditating a bit more. There is still much more room for improvement, especially for me facing my fears and obstacles. However, I do feel like I am doing incrementally better at facing things, even if I can't really run from the feeling of being overwhelmed anymore. So what's next? Well, after some thought, I'm going to keep a NoFap tracker at the top of the posts. I'm not super comfortable with this as a relapse means, well, you know...But maybe that's enough motivation for me not to do it. I've been on long streaks in the past and it's a great energy boost and helps me be more social once I get beyond the flatlines. I will not be talking about this in detail though. I'll just have the tracker there starting tomorrow. If I go on a long streak, I will definitely be going out more, will act more socially, and will definitely be on Tinder a lot more. I've had many a weekend ruined due to feeling drained after a relapse. It's time to get serious about this. Wall of text over.

Great stuff, fawn! You're really on a roll right now. It's great to watch.

Day 89 No VG - 89 day streak No SAH - 19 day streak I got some more sleep last night. I feel better. Today I was handling a bit of stress at work (that never changes). I had some stuff pop up that I needed to finish today. I was a little bit overwhelmed, but I did a pretty good job of sticking to the task and not ignoring it by performing other tasks. Overall, I did a good job of not being avoidant during the workday. I also had a minor emergency pop up right as I was about to leave work. I was able to troubleshoot it pretty quickly though. I'm actually starting to think I'm pretty good at troubleshooting equipment. It feels nice considering I have many other areas in my job that I don't perform well, in my opinion. As soon as I got home though, I got avoidant and didn't want to go out, as I should have. I'll make it a point to do that tomorrow. I'm going to spend the rest of tonight trying to set myself up as best I can for tomorrow. I've also come to the realization that no matter how many things I give up, unless I make a fundamental change, I will always find something to lose myself in and escape. Giving all this up is great and gives me an opportunity to behave correctly, but I need to act more like how I did at work today. I've definitely gotten better at this during this year, but I must become an absolute pro in facing my fears and obstacles.

Day 88 No VG - 88 day streak No SAH - 18 day streak Very tired today because I stayed up late last night. I also have something very important I need to work on and make significant progress on by mid-morning. I think I'm going to go to bed early and get up early.

Day 87 I'm not dead. No VG - 87 day streak. No SAH - 17 day streak. No really, I'm not dead... I swear. I didn't get internet in my new place until this morning. I was solely relying on my phone for my fix. Very frustrating. Nonetheless, I was 99% clean over that time. As far as sports was concerned, there was a 10 minute period where I was on Wikipedia looking up UFC fighter fight records, but I was so freaking tired that I had zero idea what I was doing. I was moving stuff at 2 AM in the morning earlier that day. As soon as I realized what was going on I stopped, and it is for those reasons, it doesn't feel like a relapse. All the other times I failed, I knowingly made the decision to act. Also, today once I got my internet installed, I had a passing thought to download League. I remember when my internet was so slow it would take 5 hours to download. Now, I have 1 GBPS speed, and I wanted to see how fast it would download. This was obviously very stupid, so I chose not to do that. However, I did binge a little bit after work because I missed it so much. At the same time, I didn't really miss it though. Scratching the itch really isn't all that satisfying to be honest. Now that I'm pretty much set up, I'm hoping to settle into more of a routine. I definitely want to keep putting more time to solving my problems instead of escaping into some fantasy, hiding, or worse. I'm hoping the change in scenery will make it easier to develop that new mentality. Besides all that, not much else has gone on. I am happy I am journaling again.

Day 80 No VG - 80 day streak No SAH - 10 day streak 100% clean. I'm still going to keep this kind of quick tonight, but I do need to elaborate about the past few days. Two days ago I went to see my new therapist. It started off poorly, as the front door was locked. Little did I know, that the door to the right of it--WITH A DIFFERENT ADDRESS NUMBER--was unlocked and led to the same hallway. I wasted ten minutes due to this. Good times. My therapist and I did not do any groundbreaking work so to speak. It was more of a "get-to-know-you." This was still helpful though, since we discussed a little bit of how my past led me to where I am now. He also let me know a little about himself too, which was good. Give and take. He seemed to deal with quite a few people like me, commenting that when World of Warcraft initially came out, he had hordes of people coming in who were hooked and didn't like it. So he seems to understand. Also, he seems to be quite a good listener and did not muck around with his phone at all, like my last therapist did. This is also great news, considering the stakes feel much higher now. It was also extremely cathartic to just speak what was on my mind to someone else besides my parents. It was like the mountain of stress was lifted off my shoulders momentarily. Yesterday, I packed as I moved to a new apartment today...sort of. I'm actually at my old apartment right now since I have a few days on the lease and internet. I also need to clean up some. Today was busy, I moved to my new place and found some time to head into work in the afternoon. It's stressful, but I really like the new place. However, I'm still extremely stressed out. But I really have to stop giving a fuck about that. For once in my life, I need to start being brave and living like I'm going to die tomorrow. I was doing some thinking about this recently, but this is my ideal way of living, even though I've been so diametrically opposed to it. My life has been full of inaction. My locus of control was outside of me. I need to start cultivating this new side of me. No more being weak and wanting to hide. Action only. That was not a short post. Oh well.

Day 79 100% clean. Still very busy. Still very tired. Now very procrastinating. Time to get to work.

Day 78 100% clean. Very busy. Very tired. Therapist appointment went well. Goodnight.

Day 77 (yet another morning post) No VG - 77 day streak No SAH - 7 day streak 100% clean. Had a dream of installing and playing several different video games this morning. Nice try brain. I've also had some urges to check sports sites but have been busy so I haven't really had the opportunity to. Boredom is a trigger I guess. Saw my cousin and his wife and kids yesterday. We had a nice dinner. I got home pretty late from that. Also, I have to leave for home, and start preparing for this week today. It's going to be a long drive. I'm probably not getting back until late nor am I going to want to post afterwards, so here we are again. Hopefully today goes well, too.

Day 76 (morning post) No VG - 76 day streak No SAH - 6 day streak 100% clean. The wedding was great. Everyone had fun, and no one got too trashed. I also got to see a lot of family I don't see often, which was great. I got to see my two eldest cousins, who I rarely see anymore, but were like brothers to me growing up. It did make me kind of sad though to hear of so many people in our family moving to different states since the area is getting so prohibitively expensive to live in. Even my parents are considering the same. Another thing I realize is how much I crave family and community. I need to start building mine. I neglect people and relationships too much. I need to put in the work. I also was able to complete my sentence completions from The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem in the morning rather than at night, for the first time. This had a marked difference on the effect of the exercise, and as a result, I made better decisions throughout my day. Anyway, I might go out with my parents earlier in the day, and then I'm going to meet up with at least one of my cousins later, so early post.

Well, @fawn_xoxo, a couple of reasons. One, I'm a guy, and there's all the cultural stigma around that. I don't buy into it necessarily, but I don't doubt the influence of growing up in such a culture. Two, I don't necessarily have shame when crying about something sad, but when it's crying about being overwhelmed at work and life, it is not my preferred reaction. I want to become better at taking those emotions as fuel to keep fighting harder rather than giving up. The cry was something akin to self pity and starting on the path to giving up, which I don't want to do. I don't want to give up for myself, for my family, and for the people I support at work since there's a lot of responsibility for what I do. Day 75 (morning post) No VG - 75 day streak No SAH - 5 day streak Quick post today since I have the wedding later. I just want to keep the streak going.

Well, first things first, to answer your last question, I don't know how you're going to be a success if you give up on your plans and say screw it, and then play video games or Netflix. You should not do that. That will not help you, but you already know that. It sounds like you're trying to create a lot of new habits at once. That's great, but that can be kind of difficult depending on which habits you are trying to create. As far as I understand it, the current state of research into willpower is that it is a finite resource, but one that can be trained with time. If you have little willpower to start, and expect yourself to be an unfailing machine with your new routine, you're probably mistaken. What you can try doing, is start with one new habit a week, and make the goal of that habit as easy as possible to implement. For example, if you wanted to start working out more, don't say you will run a marathon a day, say you will run for a minute every day, and actually run every day. If you want to, you can run for more than a minute, but you at least have to run every day for a minute. The next week, increase your goal, and after a few weeks, start implementing another habit. And most importantly, enjoy the process of improving, and congratulate yourself when you do. You're going to need to replace the dopamine of the internet/video games from something else, so you want self-improvement to be your new, more helpful habit. If you want, create a loose weekly schedule to start. I just started doing this recently and I find it helpful. Finally, the four habits I would suggest you start first if you haven't started doing so already are working out, meditating, reading, and being social. These are key habits that really help me when I stay on point with them. I hope this helps.

Day 74 No VG - 74 day streak No SAH - 4 day streak 100% clean today, but I got an unexpected sports update listening to Bill Burr's podcast. I was driving and captive--not much I could've done about that. That doesn't break the streak as far as I'm concerned. I've drove home today for a cousin's wedding tomorrow. I'm happy for my cousin, but I'm a little embarrassed as they're younger than me by a few years. Ouch. It's nice being home, but it took some time to adjust back to being with my folks. I was a little cranky from the drive. I'm also a little anxious for not being at work. I want to be refreshed when I get back to work so I can restart and redouble my efforts. These four days (or at least the first three of four) I want to be relatively free of work. I have enough other items to take care of as well. As you can tell, my emotions are still a bit all over the place, but at least they're better than they were yesterday.

Day 73 No VG - 73 day streak No SAH - 3 day streak 100% clean today. Today started out really rough. Found out I made a few mistakes/found out a few bad things happened outside of my locus of control this morning, and I became very frustrated and depressed. When I do wrong or make some kind of a mistake, I will self-flagellate to no end because my self-esteem isn't great right now. It's an affront to my competence, as I know I'm at least decently intelligent, but when I don't feel intelligent I feel like I'm good at nothing, which can't be true at all. At one point I had to go to my car to just breathe, was nearly the second time I cried in a week. I haven't cried before this in over a year. It's shameful to admit, but man, it's the truth. It happened. However, after the pity party ended, I collected myself and got back to work. That's the only thing I can keep doing that will possibly help me. I'm frustrated in many areas of my life right now, especially now that I'm facing the facts and I'm not running away as much anymore. I put myself in a crap position, and I should feel bad about it, but I need to act on it and keep going. Thankfully, after that episode, my mood leveled off a bit for the rest of the day, and despite being tired and not really wanting to go to the gym, I hit another bench press PR and overall had a good workout. I was oddly grateful for that. It was something. Some kind of an accomplishment. I've added 25 pounds to my bench press since starting up with the journal again. If I gave up on everything, I would've never done that. I would never see what I'd become. It's amazing how shattered my self-esteem can be at times, and how much I'm willing to throw away just because I'm frustrated and a bit depressed. This therapist visit couldn't be better timed. My thoughts are not in the right spot right now. At least I got to experience pulling myself out of the pit today.

Thanks @goodvibes and @Redmark, I appreciate the support! Day 72 No VG - 72 day streak (80% to 90 days, wow) No SAH - 2 day streak 100% clean today. Very busy. Got the lease signed today. Taking the no sports thing a day at a time. Tomorrow my goal is for three days (like it could be four, heheh.) Had improv class tonight, loitered around a bit after class. Didn't do so great tonight, but I learned a lot, I think. A ton of traffic coming back, so I just got home. I need some food and sleep.

Day 71 No VG - 71 day streak No SAH - 1 day streak 100% clean today. Today was a struggle. I was very tired at work because I did some extra reading last night, and because I still don't feel well. I had to help with some equipment work, and didn't do much else. It wasn't the most efficient use of my time. However, it was good for my mood, as it sort of distracted my mind and I was doing something productive. On the bright side, I was finally able to get a hold of a therapist. I will see him Monday evening. That's a relief. There's a lot I would like to work on, so if all goes well, I'll be seeing him for quite some time. I had a therapist late last year who didn't seem to care at all, and spent more time on his phone during some sessions than actually paying attention. I'm hoping this will go better, especially as now I think I have a better grasp of what I need to be focusing on.