BooksandTrees

Nice job. It's really great when you feel proud of yourself after meeting a benchmark. Especially since this journey started with pain and resentment toward the benchmark you've now met and feel good about. Keep up the good work. After 43 weeks I can tell you there will always be ups and downs but the larger the number gets the more backbone you feel in your self esteem as you learn to stand taller.

I'm kind of tired of feeling sick. I have stomach issues every day with diarrhea each morning and sometimes twice per day. Lots of fatigue. A lot of people think it's stress. Idk. The only thing really stressing me out is that bachelor party I think. It really took a lot out of me.

I agree. The one thing I'm liking is that I'm not getting brutally depressed about all of this right now. For some reason I'm letting a lot of these stressors go and acknowledging that they're not my problems, my fault, or require me to care. I'm more positive and confident. For some reason this has really clicked with me this week. The idiot at work and my family isn't even bothering me either. I think the exercise, hobbies, and schedule I've created has really helped. I'm also trying to socialize less with the people I dislike. It's interesting that I'm now 3 weeks into this mindset and I usually change each week. It's making me wonder if I even need medication for depression.

I'm going to tell that guy tonight that I'm not being his best man. Fuck this. I am tired of doing things for the sake of others at my expense. Fuck that.

I found a few YouTubers have been helpful. I think Graham Stephen has been helpful. I don't think Ryan Scribener is helpful. They both desperately want attention, but Ryan is fake and Graham is more authentic. There are others online who can give decent advice. I wouldn't believe in any specific stocks they suggest because it could be a way for them to influence people to invest in their stocks.

I agree. I may have spoken out of anger for most of my posts this weekend regarding socializing and personality types. Just unfortunate that I was surrounded by these people and I'm trying to actively remove them from my life. I like where my life is at for the time. I like boxing, rock climbing, and working on my cartoon. It's nice. I like socializing with a few people and I'm learning I don't want to date right now. I've been pretty happy for the past 2 weeks. I also generally only post on people's threads who post on mine. I used to actively post on multiple threads but I don't think many people share the same interest in helping you as you do in helping them. But I appreciate the journaling process in monitoring my progress.

Thanks for replying. I also find this website to be kind of hollow as well with support. I've become more and more detached from it recently. I don't think we should feel bad for leaving people behind who are complete shut ins. I don't think they offer us a quality of life that is worthy of anything at all. I've just found myself to be so alone and I'm tired of it. I am beginning to hate my introvert friends because they don't appear to care about me or know how to communicate and I'm tired of being the one who digs for reasons, trying to understand them and why they can't communicate, and always having empathy for them with those reasons. I just want some people to care about me and make me feel important rather than a punch line of my own stupid story that I've been experiencing the past few years. I'm tired of just complaining about stupid things in my life and people just laugh instead of understand the pain behind my jokes. I tell the jokes to make myself feel better.

I'm 43 weeks free of gaming and I feel like it has really opened my eyes about people, life, lifestyles, and purpose. One of the issues I'd like to highlight this week is that I've constantly been complaining about fake people. I think I have multiple "friends" who put zero effort into any friendships. These people are the introverted, meek, shut ins who do not socialize with others, don't talk to others about their problems, and don't talk to you about yours. Zero effort and pathetic altogether. I have so many friends who are addicted to video games who just work 8 hours a day, play video games 8-10 hours a day, and sleep the remainder. They make no effort to socialize, mate, or improve their lives or fix their problems. They just escape into this cesspool called the internet where they can hide from everything instead of face their problems. I'm fucking tired of being involved with people who have no social skills whatsoever. Just garbage. I'm going to highlight an example of this. I accepted being the best man at my acquaintance's wedding this November. I want to highlight that I used the word "acquaintance" and not "friend". I have known this person for 9 years now. We have had 10 phone conversations this year, 0 in 2018, 0 in 2017, 3 in 2016, less than 5 from 2013-2015. We only hang out at giant barbecues and holiday parties myself or friends have thrown and hosted. He doesn't communicate or put any effort into his other friends either. Nobody talks to him. He makes no effort to reach out and doesn't tell you anything in his life. The consequences of this is that he hasn't received any acceptance RSVPs for the wedding. Only 3 people accepted. His own cousin, who he wanted in his groom party, asked me if I was a real person because the groom "has no friends and he didn't believe we were real". Who says that? Who does that? This weekend was a disaster because my other friend and I were stuck planning his bachelor party. We planned an amazing 4 day spread. We camp on Thursday night, morning hike to see the sunrise on a beautiful and easily hike-able mountain, brewery tour on a tour bus for 4 breweries including dinner at a top notch restaurant, sky diving, camping, nice restaurant, a harbor cruise at sunset, dinner at a 5 star restaurant in the city overlooking the skyline, and ending with a nice toast to a future. The weekend was ruined. He and his sister canceled the hike, the harbor cruise, the camping, the eating at restaurants, and the skydiving was canceled due to inclement weather. All we did was a fantastic brewery tour that my friend organized, a shitty indoor skydiving trip, and lunch at the wrong restaurant. And the funny thing was that the other people in the wedding party kept asking "What are we doing next?". HAAHAHAAHA.........!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are doing nothing because they were fucking canceled! I don't want to be the best man anymore. I did it out of pity because he has no friends. On top of that, his wife to be is A FUCKING FAT CUNT. Complete piece of shit. She forced him to move almost 1,000 miles away from home. He settled with her and she's just a trash heap. Controlling personality, a bully to him to get what she wants, and has cheated on him. He has given up and won't try dating anyone because he can't communicate. I'm tired of being associated with meek losers who hide behind the computer and can't communicate. These people who don't care about making friends or living life. Just what their guild, character, gaming community, favorite streamer, or subreddit is up to. Nothing else. Stop fucking hiding and live your fucking life no matter how hard or easy it is. I've had to deal with this revelation that most of the people I met from college are these personality types. My goal over the next couple years is finding the handful of real friends who listen to you, share their life with you, and value you. Social media and the internet have turned friendship into a numbers game and not a valued service. People care about followers, likes, friends list sizes, and influence. This has resulted into people becoming selfish and unaware of how to communicate with others. Friendship has diminished and I'm tired of being around it. I now have to wrestle with the decision of canceling my role as best man for someone I've talked to less than 30 times in the past 5 years. Should be a no brainer, but is it? His life is miserable and he's lost. A real friend would help him through it. That's the struggle. I also don't want to hear about someone being offended that I criticized them for being a reddit and gaming lark.

Great job with this. I, along with multiple people in our situations, have the same issues with anxiety, depression, and hypochondria. Anxiety causes all of it. Gamers have high anxiety because of how demanding it is and how it can bombard our minds while doing real life issues. Most gamers are tricked because they relax and feel they escape their stress in games, but that turns to toxicity after a while because if the game goes bad on top of real life then that's two worlds destroyed for them. I'm also seeing a doctor next weekend regarding medication. Although I've been boxing, rock climbing, and socializing more and my stress has gone down big time. I haven't felt depressed in weeks after reaching my lowest point 3 weeks ago. I've also been able to work on hobbies and give myself a break when needed. Take your time, try not to worry. Live your life and through living you'll begin to crave activities. I saw a boxing studio and felt the need to exercise because of stress. I'm now training 2 hours a day there. It's amazing.

Hope you feel better soon and find an answer. Deal with your issues 1 by 1 and don't put the world on your shoulders regarding finishing these goals and fixing yourself right away. Be patient and know this is your journey now. You're also allowed to enjoy life in different ways on the journey when available. You got this.

Thanks for sharing. The awkward moment at work happens to all of us. My strong advice is to never date at work. You never know if they'll say something behind your back, rumors spread, they try to get you in trouble with human resources, etc. Plus, you never know if your coworker is an impulsive and immature moron. It could create lots of office drama that poorly affects your work. Based off of experience, even if she asks you out on a date, don't do it. It's tempting because you are lonely, but the mental stress from it is crippling sometimes and can create a great deal of anxiety. You're not a fool for putting love first. The reason humans are alive is to reproduce and create more humans. Technically your priorities are good lol. All of us on this website are struggling with new goals because they're new, hard, and challenge our former beliefs in life. Take a deep breath and try to appreciate all of the effort you've put into yourself and your goals. Find some activites to take your mind of them as well. I've been trying to fix myself less and schedule more activites to bolster the change I wanted to make.

Could you elaborate on things that are not in order, how they fell apart, and what you can do to put them back in order or create a better order with safe-fails to prevent the same mistakes from happening?

Today is 42 weeks game free for me. I got over the workplace drama that I'd been going through and thankfully feel a lot better about it. I then went and played tennis with my two friends. I want to ask this girl out on a date. I think we're very compatible and I get along with her family as well. We'll see what happens with it. I spent today working with my friend on the cartoon we've been creating. We spent 8 hours writing and drawing and it felt great. I really enjoyed it. I then spent a few hours complaining with my friend about this stupid bachelor party we've been planning. It's next weekend and has been a complete disaster, but I'm not letting that affect the weekend I've had so far. I'm very happy with the progress I've made with socializing and hobbies along with my progress moving on with the work stuff. I also had a good time rock climbing as well.

Dude, that's awesome. I've been about 42 weeks clean this Saturday. It's amazing how much your life changes. Good luck with everything.

Thank you. I've had some friends tell me how their lives have improved from medication and I just know I'm not improving right now. I'm no longer addicted to games, but I'm so destroyed mentally and have no outlet. I'm gonna try boxing, but I don't even have the heart to go there.