8 January 2018 First official day
Today was my first official day of no-gaming. I plan to do the 90 days detox first then see if I’m pursuing it after that.
The reason I decided to finally quit gaming was simple. Game aren't fun for me anymore. I mostly played them by habit since they were a big part of my life since I was a kid. Recently I got more frustrated with them so I assumed it was the right moment to start this adventure.
It was a pleasant surprise to see that my friends were supportive to this, I totally expected them to say its a dumb idea since they are for the most part all gamers too. I don't think they believe its going to help but at least they are okay with this. Also, we regularly meet for board game, drinking and movie night so it's not like I say my farewell to them.
I need to plan a strategy to help me in this adventure. So far, I uninstalled all my games but decided to keep Steam. I use it only for chatting with my friends. Same for Discord. If I feel I can't hold back because of them I will obviously uninstall them. I also installed a tool to track how many times I spend browsing certain page like Reddit, YouTube and gaming pages. I then realised that I also spend way too much time browsing mindlessly the Internet. Thus, I decided to set a daily limit of 1 hour excluding obviously the time I need to spend for homework and studying. I'm starting with 1 hour first and plan to reduce it to 30 minutes in the future.
There is another activity that I felt was important to limit myself with. If I’m not playing or browsing the Internet I’m generally watching anime or series on Netflix. I feel it's a lesser problem than gaming but I don't want to stop only to spend my time on Anime or Netflix instead. My limit is the same as for browsing the Internet so 1 hour a day. 2 hours a day for doing non-constructive activity is a lot but I plan to reduce the time when I feel like I’m ready for it. Of course, I’m allowing myself to do these activities only after I’m done with my homework and studying. Furthermore, I plan to do these time-waster activities only when taking break from school work.
That is the end of my first entry in my journal, I decided to write it in English to get better in writing skills and get a better vocabulary. It also might be helpful if I decide to study in translation which is something I'm interested in. Mostly from French to English.