ShadyCB

That's interesting. Dreaming about playing an ammo.. huh, there's a new one! Would you like to share with us what you were doing in the game? Oddly enough this reminds me of something I found years ago, it was like mediation but you could do things in your dreams.. I forgot it, oh well.

Huh thats interesting, I heard you guys talk about f.lux but I never really knew what it was. I'll install it tomorrow has I'm abit busy today, thank you for the suggestion, Laney! I hope everyone is having a cool night tonight.

Sure! I meant in a way as negativity could be affecting some of the choices you make. I believe this is evident (correct me if I'm wrong please): I wrote a blog post. I linked it here temporarily but deleted the post because I felt self-conscious about sharing it. I think it's because the post was critical in nature, and whenever I'm critical of anyone I always expect people to be critical back at me, even when I'm doing it in a civil and hopefully constructive way. I think I'm far too cautious to actually be offensive The outlines are what I consider to be negative talk. And even though your intention is clearly noble there is still an itch somewhere within you that is making you think twice about posting a blog-post. I'm curious if you've kept a diary of your more recent thoughts when you engage in an activity like this, similar to CBT, it may yield some interesting results if you haven't gave it a shot already. I hope this clears up any confusion! Con.

I think this feeling might be natrual if you haven't done it much. If you can try to not beat yourself up when you write something critical. I used to feel like this when I was learning new things, eventually I came to the conclusion that, regardless if I want to prevent something bad happening (misunderstanding, offensive jokes, etc) it will happen anyway. I dealt with this by letting go of the fear I might upset someone. If I upset someone, I know when to apologize and let go of the feeling. I suppose you could try more of a aggressive approach where you put yourself in the spotlight so to speak, perhaps getting used to it could help you to overcome the feeling. As to where this may come from.. either we were bullied in public school to some extent or perhaps we were indoctorinated at some pont to believe mistakes are evil, they're bad bad things. When in reality, mistakes is what makes us better and near enough perfect. It seems though you read some interesting books, you're aware of the whole positivity v negativity thing, correct? Con.

9/1/2016 Been pretty lazy today. Saturday so I thought why not stay in bed and sleep the day off, heh. I have realized I'm alot more tired and able to sleep at night properly now compared to when I was gaming, for some reason I'm always so alert when I play games but now I have better restful nights. 3 Things I'm grateful for: Friends that I have who are in the same country as myself. The beautiful weather we've been having for a little while and still being young. What I could have done to make my day better: Waking up at a different time, and although its the weekend I could still learn a new language just more passively until the weekend is over. What I will do differently tomorrow: Wake up in the morning and re-learn quite a few bits of Korean. Speaking of learning a new language, I've been pretty much banging my head against the wall for this one, heh. I have a fantastic app to practice the language with but I think for the first time in a long time I'm actually serious about getting it all sorted out now gaming is out of my way. However, during my gaming and poor times I somehow managed to learn the entire alphabet and recite it, so there's that. 감삽니다! Thanks!

I saw this video on YouTube a couple of hours ago! Nice one on this, Cam!

Haha, that's funny "sober feelz for real" might have to make that my signature. darn, sounds pretty painful with a headache just from quitting! I'm not really all too sure with what I can do, except for keeping you (really supportive) guys updated. I'll be waiting on some material to be delivered so I can start moving with my education, then I'll be saving up some money for participating in Airsoft. These are things that take me out the house and that's good, I guess heh. Thank you by the way! This template should be useful from now on. (when I found a way to implement it or something similar to it) I'll have to come up with some things to note on in the journel, there's really no key points built in yet. 8/1/2016 I've took on quite abit of work for my driving lesson I had. It went really well, took my mind of gaming and allows me to pursue something small, yet it will help me later on down the road especially with applying for jobs and going to College. I've been keeping myself busy by browsing some videos on youtube involving comedy skits, documentaries and police shows. I'm looking at making some appointments next week for my health and looking at getting some equipment together for Airsoft and might hit a workout routine. Although most of these are reserved for next week and the week after, it's a pretty good start considering, I think.

Gaming pretty much knocked me out of school at the young age. I had no will power and since school was stressful all I could think about is the next game I'm going to play, what excuse I'll come up with just to try and play games most if not all day. My school came up with a couple of ideas as to why I'm losing out on so much in school. I was never a good student anyway, my attendence was average but my homework was absolutely terrible. I near enough came at the bottom of my class everytime and I didn't really care as I thought it never affected me. I don't think my teachers came to the conclusion of video games distracting me a whole lot. I think my parents were aware but not sure how to handle or proceed with it, as I was just happy with the games and that's it. I feel quite silly now, because I literally have to go back a couple of years just to catch up in terms of education. To think this could've been avoided had I not played videogames so much and if I just focused on the real world and my goals and achievements first, then game last if I wanted to. I suppose better late than never!

7th Jan 2016 Tonight I'll be documenting my progress on not gaming and doing gaming related things. Instead I'll be replacing my usual gaming activities with something I should've done long, long time ago. And that is catching up with my education and finally sitting my exams. I'm not sure what kind of job I'm going to obtain once I'm done with education so I'm just focusing on changing my path in life for the better right now. Through this journey I hope to learn new things, ideas and techniques. If there's one thing that I'm really terrible at, it's remembering what I've learned a couple of weeks later, heh. Let's work on that! But yes, today I realized I did relapse early hours this morning. It was supposed to be a 27 minute video about a new device. Instead, I reinstalled Steam and played a little. That's just it, right? A little. When I looked at the time it was already quarter to 4 in the morning. What felt like minutes was hours. And I felt really uncomfortable gaming again because of the high stress games cause me. Well, I now know to avoid it at all times.

Hey! No problemo, it's an awesome community here and I feel comfortable atleast. Hm.. welp, I unfortunately kind of relapsed. the main issue for this was I geninuely wasn't sure if I was addicted or had a strong urge to do nothing but play games all day. Thank you for the help!

Cam when you have the chance, could you link or give abit of information on what signs and symptoms are gaming addiction? Thanks!

Hey! Just a short introduction; Call me CB or C, up to you I don't mind. I'm 19 years old and I first got into a strong habit of gaming when I was approx. 10 years of age. School was challenging and I didn't realize that gaming was giving me a relief of stress but also creating a bigger issue later on with continous playing. I've recognized my issue and I'm doing atleast 2 months without gaming to see what I can achieve with other activities and see if accomplishing my goals are being blocked by my habit of gaming. I'm also somewhat philoshopical in terms of finding answers to things. One of my examples of this would be happiness and motivation, I found by eliminating negative self-talk and padding myself up with praise is helping me to keep a steady routine and schedule! Because of my gaming addiction (although I would argue I don't have one, just no moderated gaming) I almost fumbled my lesson this week. That was the time I recognized I should atleast give this a fair try to see how things turn out. CB. Hope you guys are having a lovely day!

Thank you, Octsober! It's a pretty clear definition what you have given. I think I'll follow that! Hm, that's interesting! I haven't thought about doing LARPing or tabletop roleplaying.. I have no idea where I would start to find a group, heh. But these are really good ideas to get me out the house. Thank you very much! It's great to have a community that's supportive. Hm.. I wonder if LARPing is only medival themed?

Is Habbo actually a game, or social interaction? I'm leaning more social interaction as this is usually why I play it - to meet other people. And surprisingly it has gone very well before for me in the past. I know it sounds rather silly but even being an adult it seems like a cool way to socialize with others. Any recommandations for other social sites?

What is your commitment? No games? No streams? Anything else? I will not play any video games, watch any streams of video game footage (with the exception of the Co-Optional podcast) while it is talking about games, they don't shove footage in your face or attempt to influence you to play it. I will most likely commit to other hobbies and activities in life, creative writing and studying has grown on me quite abit. How long do you want this challenge to last? It will last for 2 months. It will (supposedly) end in Feburary 29th. If I feel like not enough time has passed, I'll give it another month without games until I see a positive change. What are your goals? My goals are learning to drive, practicing a number of different hobbies I have interest in and also to begin living outside of the fantasy world. Perhaps it is sharing abit too much information, but I've always used video games when I was younger to escape this world. I felt like I had potential but being a youth I was restricted with no way of anyone taking me seriously. Video games allowed me to escape from that reality. Now I am an adult, I can finally take action that I've wanted for years - yet I feel games are holding me back from it. Why are you doing this? While it was fun gaming, it brings out the worst in me. Not only my negative attitude and my profounity but also concering medical issues with my anxiety and frequently increased heart rates. I've come to accept games have changed since beyond the 2007-2010 era. Games cannot be enjoyed at this moment in time for myself, I hope to gain the enjoyment of just playing the role in a video game, rather than getting hung up on winning everytime. My final words are this; I like to live in the reality, make something of myself. Playing a video game that takes a look into the role I would like to do is good and all, but only for the short time. When reality hits you and you're still someone sitting down, no degree, no life experience, just a monitor and a PC. It's pretty depressing. That, is what I would like to change about my life. Cheers!