info-gatherer

How do you feel, energy-wise?

Day 90 So, 3 months without cigarettes. I already started to reduce the nicotine content of my vape and I plan to take it to 0. I’m also close to 180days of no videogames. This wasn’t a good journal, I just talked about academics and vaping all the time. But maybe that’s what I needed to focus on during the last months. I hope everyone else is doing fine. I’ll go back to reading your journals and partecipating more sooner or later. Right now I don’t feel like doing it and I don’t want to force it.

Cigarettes 90days detox is almost over, but yesterday & today I got urges to play League of Legends. I don’t have anything to do this weekend, I’m too tired for studying. I would gladly try and play some league, but I’m scared. After all it’s been just 5-6 months sice I quit. I really don’t know what’s the right thing to do... Part of me says there’s nothing wrong in playing, but another part of me is scared of going back to the pitfall of desperation I left not too much time ago. What if I can’t control it? What if I lose my mental freedom? I don’t know...

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I can relate to everything you wrote. That trap of waking up every morning forgetting the misery of yesterday... all of us know it too well. Welcome here, and congratulations for taking action against your addiction. I suggest you to try a 90 day detox, it’s the easy way.

Tom, thanks a lot. I didn’t answer because the dinner didn’t happen. I’ll save your advice for next occasion (probably next weekend). So, many things happened since my last post but right now I need to focus on my next exam, on friday. I am spending way too much time and energy browsing vaping websites until late in the night, enough is enough. It’s a major time sink and I’m tackling it. GOAL BROWSE NO (zero, nein, not at all) VAPING WEBSITES FROM NOW UNTIL 29th OF JUNE, STARTING NOW

C O N G R A T U L A T I O N S Glad you made it! Two fast things before I need to run very quickly because the university canteen is going to close and I won’t have dinner 1 Nobody choses to be an addict. So true. But: people MUST CHOSE to STOP being addicted. The problem with addiction is that it works only one way. Congrats for CHOSING to stop. 2 Stopping by instead of being tunnelvisioned and going back home. I really admire you for this because this is probably the main problem I have right now. I am - or I think I am - so busy that I never spend time with people. Happy for you because you didn’t lose that chance. I’m out, congrats again & take care

I’m in a very similar position to you, I feel I can relate to most of the things you write: focus on career, no real friends, didn’t game for a long time. Anyway, congrats for your achievements!

Nice to have you here. Posting your journal consistently every day will help you go through the hard times. Quitting videogames can be a massive improvement in your life, so first of all congratulations for your decision. Rotting in the gaming comfort zone is just another way of meeting the truck unprepared. There’s no tricks for escaping, treating it as a serious matter and not some kind of afterthought is enough, and you’ve already taken a very good first step in that direction. So, welcome to the community :)

Because I’m an introvert who doesn’t know how to small talk and/or be funny. I just need friends I guess

Day 62 I got invited for dinner by two young researchers/professors through my gf and a friend of mine. It’s next weekend. I know I should accept because I need friends badly. I can’t just go on being alone forever. But I have this feeling it’s gonna end terribly. I’m just scared I will be uneasy and have to pretend to be having a nice time until late in the night. Any advice now would be very welcome

Day 61 I discovered this subreddit called “braincels”. Spent hours going through it. So much self-hatred is painful to read. I’m grateful to be part of the GameQuitters community, a place where we incite each other to improve our lives, not hang ourselves or kill random people. Thanks everyone for this beautiful community we have here. Going back to uni city. Skipped lesson today. Also, I woke up late today and yesterday. My main goal for tomorrow is waking up early and live a meaningful day.

Day 59 I’ll take the weekend for relaxing. Actually, I’ so focused on university that I’m studying also when I am supposed to be relaxing, eg today on the beach or yesterday night until 1 AM, but that’s just because studying is slowly becoming again what it was when I started, 5 years ago: a passion, a search for knowledge, the ultimate goal. Studying mostly doesn’t feel as a burden anymore. I’m proud of myself. Today I received a mail from Riot Games. Some ingame event is ENDING SOON, I need to login fast!!!! lol get lost riot games, you blackhearted drug dealers

I live and believe in the university, I got 0 problems with lecturing. Thanks again

Hey @JustTom, thanks. Yes, I often have this problem that I feel judged, but more often I just feel uneasy for another reason. I’m the judgemental one. I don’t like to be with people that I find boring, uninteresting. I often prevent that by completely staying away from people but this way I end up feeling alone which is way worse. I understood just now for the first time in my life that there are only two possible scenarios when I meet other people: 1 I find them boring or stupid and I judge them 2 I find them interesting and I feel judged, I do my best to impress them instead of being spontaneous There’s no middle ground for me, all my life I spent time with people that I don’t like too much, that I feel somehow superior to, because whenever I meet people that in my head are worth something, I feel judged, I feel they are “too much” for me. I’m sincerely thankful to you for helping me to understand this very important thing.

Day 57 Yesterday I put a cigarette in my mouth without lighting it. I mean, I often “put cigarettes in my mouth” without lighting them. my friends often ask me to roll a cigarette for them if their hands are busy, and I have no problem doing so because I am done with cigarettes and they don’t scare me. But yesterday I put a cigarette in my mouth because I wanted to taste the tobacco and I was missing it for just a minute. I didn’t light it, but a part of me wanted to. I am not going to light any cigarette for the rest of my life. It’s the right thing to do. Almost 2 months without smoking. I see great health and energy benefits. I’m happy about it.

Day 56 Don’t know what to do today. I’d like to take a couple days off but I’ll do that in the weekend. I’m sitting on a chair in the library’s garden, doing nothing. Just the thought of studying gives me a headache right now. Guess I’ll keep sitting here until something happens.

Aced it. Maybe my attitude was slightly wrong (know-it-all) but I did a good job. Happy about it. Now I go to tennis and I’ll probably journal again tonight because I really feel like doing it

Day 55 Public speaking exam at 16PM, three hours from now. I didn’t do as good as the last time, because it was the first time for me working with Laws and Parlamentary discussion and I did some mistakes (I read the wrong stuff), but I think I achieved a decent global knowledge of the topic and I will do my best to ace it once again. I worked so hard. Yes, I did mistakes, but I am prepared overall. Fuck you Illidan. Let’s go.

Let’s go! 1 week in!

I would go if I could wear a mask, if life was more similar to the Internet and I didn’t have to show my face. I would just dance, and talk, and maybe reveal myself at the end. I’d find myself still awake at 6 AM on the roof of some building, watching the sunrise. I used to live like that not too many years ago. What happened?

Day 52 Studied all day and then cleaned the house. A friend of mine invited me out because she’s celebrating her 30th birthday. I don’t feel like going. Life is strange: she and her friends, a big group of people, passed under my window a minute ago and I had to come here and write this. I heard them talking and laughing while they’re going to a party. What’s holding me here, in my room, watching The Simpsons, instead of being with them, drinking and dancing? My room is quite clean. Not the usual den, not a place where I can hide and feel protected. Actually, those people are still in the street, 10 meters under my room. I feel so alone, and yet I don’t want to deal with them. Am I scared? What do I fear? Why can’t I share their enthusiasm? Experience says that I should just get dressed and go downstairs. But they are screaming so loud. I don’t like screaming. Maybe I don’t know joy anymore? I just want to be safe, inside my shell. I feel so lost. I’d like to cry but I can’t. What’s wrong with me? They’re singing happy birthday, F. They’re so happy. Those short-stories Carver wrote 50 years ago, I had almost forgot them. I feel blank.

If I can be brutally honest, I think your problem is that you have a romantic idea of life. I’m not saying this as a moral judgement (I’m not saying that you think “wrong”), but trying to analyze what prevents you from taking action. You see life as a boring task because you expect life to be wonderful and interesting and full of passion (without doing anything to make it so, of course), like in the movies. You consider life not for what it is, but for what it should be. You see the gap between reality and morality and you feel lost. You try so hard to understand and fail to see what is right in front of you: life is simple. It’s not hard. It’s simple. Life doesn’t care about you: you can enjoy it or not, it’s up to you! And it’s usually wise to enjoy it, otherwise you will suffer every day and keep asking yourself what you did wrong. You must TAKE ACTION. Being responsible is NOT stupid, is NOT boring. It means CARING about you. You don’t love yourself enough to see it, but I’d like to show you the other side of the matter with this post. How to build a routine? But THAT’S NOT THE POINT! The point is that when you wake up today - not yesterday, not tomorrow, not next week - but TODAY you don’t want to waste your life. You want to live a meaningful day. You want to be happy. Confess it to yourself: everyone wants to be happy, you too. You lack both the courage and the discipline needed for it, that’s why you fail. But it’s never too late, today is always the day. When I wake up I always say “what a wonderful day!”. If past me from 1 year ago would see actual me, he would think I’ve been brainwashed by uncultured stupid self-help websites and laugh his ass off. You know what? I’ve never been more lucid. And my days are usually wonderful. It’s the attitude that makes all the difference. You don’t want it this way? Does it look stupid? Again, living a happy life is only up to you. Make your decision! You don’t have the courage? Then start with discipline. Disclaimer: Forgive me if I was too direct, just a word from you and I won’t comment again (adding this last part because last time I tried to be completely honest I ended up looking completely stupid and the mods had to intervene).

Hey! I’m sorry to hear you’re having a hard time lately, expecially the medications part. If you don’t mind a word of short&straightforward personal advice, my opionion is that after getting rid of Netflix you should stop using Youtube too. It’s not true you “can’t quit” it. There’s other ways to learn how to play the guitar, both online and offline. I suggest you the second option: why don’t you take lessons? That’s a social activity as well (expecially group lessons) that can help you cope with stress and/or boredom. (I play the guitar myself... I mean not really, I almost don’t play anymore, but I used to spend a lot of time in it). On a more general level, I hope you can beat whatever is haunting you. You showed perseverance and strenght in the last months, I’m sure you can succeed if only you regain your confidence!

After I graduated I spent 1 full month playing League of Legends all day. I graduated with full honors so my parents were just momentarily proud of me and didn’t try to stop me. At the end of that month I realized that my life was going down the drain, I had no real interest in anything, I had no friends, I was creepy in social situations and there was probably no decent job waiting for me in the future. In the past I suffered from anxiety and depression, gaming addiction, smoking addiction, a couple months of alchoholism, OCD (at least this one was diagnosed by a professional). I spent whole weeks without going out of home, doing nothing on the sofa, waking up at 4 PM every day. Of course I didn’t want to live anymore. I used to think so much about the human condition, analyzing every single aspect of my life on a philosophical level, that I just couldn’t take action. Everything looked meaningless. I had no goals. I thought I was wrong, inherently flawed. I feared human contact. I used to write a lot of poetry and short stories when I was depressed, hours of writing every night, I dreamt I would take revenge on society through creating art. But then I lost confidence in myself, I judged me worthless. After the month of gaming 24/7 something changed. I realized I could not afford to let my life pass by without trying to improve it. It was not confidence that kept me going, but desperation. I transformed my fear into desperation. Desperation, for me, is what made me “get things done”, doing instead of thinking. I understood that I was going to have a life full of suffering every single day of my existence if I didn’t do my best to change. I realized that suffering is not cool, is not special, doesn’t mean I am better than other people. I realized how everyone suffers, not just me, I saw how other people do their best to be functional nonetheless. I realized I didn’t want to be an outsider anymore. I wanted to find people who loved and understood me, I wanted to be functional. Desperation means that I knew that hell was waiting for me, because I was already living it and I didn’t take action anyway. I finally knew very clearly that I HAD TO ESCAPE FROM MY CAGE. It was pure survival instinct what taught me to get things done. I had to stop crying and do my job. Being a functional human being. Slowly confidence came as well when I started to see progress (and it didn’t take long). Desperation transformed into confidence. After 4-5 months, I think I am a functional human being and happy about my life. Hope this helps.